Roche World Cup 2021

2021 World Cup Champion: Meyyappa Manickam Sethuraman (Meyya), OneRoche Malaysia Toastmasters Club, Roche Services & Solutions APAC (Malaysia)

Meyya joined Roche in February 2020 as Country Chief Accountant and has been a member of Toastmasters for 16 years. Public speaking has become a passion in him since then, where it has transformed him from a boring accountant into a people's influencer and able to connect, communicate and collaborate with people from different demographics.  

He actively participates as speaker, emcee, conference moderator for Roche internal events and for local accounting bodies. His personal motto is "Begin, The Rest Is Easy".

2021 World Cup runner-up: Iulia Dragan, RoBaToMas - Roche Basel Toastmasters, Basel, BS, Switzerland

Iulia joined Toastmasters 4 years ago looking to get rid of her fear of public speaking. This has been an important step in her journey of putting her focus inwards, looking for what drives her instead of looking for external motivation. That is how she got to know and experiment with a variety of self-development programs and tools.

Today she is President of Roche Basel Toastmasters and works as a Scrum Master, Trainer and Coach in Pharma Informatics. She is also a volunteer in the Roche Career Center. 

Outside of work, whether it is cycling up mountain passes on her road bike or hiking in any kind of weather conditions, Iulia loves to be out in nature and recharge. When she is not doing sports Iulia enjoys spending her time meditating, reading or traveling the world.  

2021 World Cup 3rd place: Katie White, 

Katie White has been a happy member of Roche Tissue Diagnostics since 2009, and a proud Roche Desert Toastmaster since 2016. Katie works in the development of on-tissue detection components in the cancer diagnostics division. Toastmasters has helped Katie get fewer butterflies when speaking, cut out filler works and other distracting gestures, answer impromptu questions in meetings, present technical information more confidently, and meet wonderful people across the organization. 

2021 World Cup finalist: Nicole Garcia, Roche MVPs Club, Roche Mississauga

Always chasing an adrenaline rush, Nicole joined Toastmasters days after onboarding at the Roche Mississauga office in March 2019. Why not couple her move from the public to the private sector with a leap into public speaking development? One year of in person and one year of virtual meetings later, she is a more confident speaker behind the screen or not. Nicole credits Toastmasters with her improved meeting facilitation skills, leadership skills through being on her club executive, and simply learning that pauses are underrated. When mentoring and coaching new hires or students, public speaking and leadership development are topics Nicole always offers to support with. That is the goal - help bring the skills and confidence learned in Toastmasters to the workforce (and beyond!)

2021 World Cup finalist: Elena Kochetkova, Genentech Toastmasters, South San Francisco, USA

Elena Kochetkova is a Research Software Engineer III at RISE (Research Informatics and Software Engineering) Department.  She joined Genentech Toastmasters in 2017 seeking to improve her public speaking skills. In 2020, Elena got introduced to Toastmaster Leadership  and since then served in the capacity of VPPR, President, Area Director of District 4 and is currently serving as Public Relations Manager of District 4

Elena, her husband and their 3 kids  are avid boaters and to date the family spent more time on the water then on land. Elena is an avid tennis player and Is playing for Pacific NW USTA League. 

Contest Chair - Louis - Edgar Imhof, Roche Basel Toastmasters

Louis is one of the founding members of Roche Basel club and has been a Toastmaster since 2014, having reached the ACB (Advanced Communicator Bronze) and ALB (Advanced Leader Bronze) levels in the traditional program - so we can refer to him as a Dinosaur Toastmaster :-). He started in Genentech Toastmasters club (during a short assignment in the US), then joined the Basel International speakers and the Basel University Multilingual club - both at the same time, and taking officer duties in both, before joining the newly created Roche Basel RoBaToMas, where he has the first club president. Having switched to Pathways,

Chief Judge - Javier Gomez, Roche MVPs Toastmasters Club, Mississauga, ON, CA

Javier joined Toastmasters a couple of months after onboarding at the Roche Mississauga office in August 2019. Originally working as an intern at Roche, toastmasters was the perfect opportunity to network with peers and improve on public speaking skills. The main challenge when joining toastmasters was adapting to a new environment and presenting in a different language. Now, a full-time employee in Product Development he is a more confident speaker, who does not need to think twice about every word and it's all thanks to the supportive community that Toastmasters encourages. Javier has learned how to develop arguments and convince people of his ideas by the use of words and visual cues. Now his goal is beyond self-learning, now he wants to provide the same assistance and supportive environment to other members of the club as he received when he joined for the first time.