Luncheon Speakers

We were pleased to have Gilbert Chaidez as our guest speaker this week. He works for Rise Against Hunger – an international hunger relief organization that is also a Collaborating Organization with Rotary International.  Rise Against Hunger distributes food and life-changing aid to the world's most vulnerable. They focus on the issue of hunger from a global perspective. Each year they mobilize over 400,000 volunteers around the world to provide over 60 million meals in 70 countries. Rise Against Hunger's vision is to have a world without hunger. Here are a few slides from [...]

We were pleased to have Charles Bender as our speaker on Oct. 21. He is the Founding CEO of Place of Hope, Inc., a faith-based and state-licensed, family-style child welfare organization serving abused and neglected children, located in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Charles earned his bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton and also studied at the University of South Florida in Tampa. An accomplished administrator, Bender provides a solid combination of strategic vision, leadership, management experience, organizational development and advancement skills. Throughout his career, Bender has made it his main objective to positively [...]

The Club was pleased to have the founders of The Royce Deale Foundation tell us about their new foundation that’s Mission is to provide to cultivate love, hope, and opportunity in the current and future youth of Pearl City. They are doing this through three positive Values: Commitment, Consistency and Respect. Structure: The Royce Deale Foundation has a unique element not found in most non-profits: youth empowerment. The organization consists of a Youth Advisory Board that acts as a platform for the Youth Leaders of Pearl City. The Youth Advisory Board heads the direction, action, and [...]

Our speaker on Sept. 2 was Andrea Virgin, President of Virgin Design. She established the company with the vision of creating a planning and engineering services company, centered on the client experience. Andrea was raised in Boca Raton. In addition to her early education, Andrea trained at Boca Ballet Theatre and Harid Conservatory to become a professional ballerina, ultimately dancing with both Houston Ballet and Ballet Florida. Andrea then decided to enroll full-time at FAU for her second career as a civil engineer. Upon graduation from FAU and Cornell University, she swapped her pointe [...]

The Club was honored to have Ralph de la Vega as its guest speaker on July 1, 2020. Ralph is the past Vice Chairman of AT&T. He relocated from Dallas to Boca Raton following his retirement.  Ralph shared a moving story of how he immigrated from Cuba at the US at age 10. When Castro took power and nationalized all businesses and industry, his family decided to leave Cuba and immigrate to the US. When they got to the airport, the officials said “only the boy can go” only his papers were OK. He [...]