: About Me

Pamela Mertz has been a Toastmaster since April 2006, and presently serves as President of her local Toastmasters club. She earned her Competent Communicator (CC) and Competent Leader (CL) Toastmasters awards in less than a year and a half. Pam also earned her Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB) in October 2008.

Pam stutters, and is proud to say it is something she does, not who she is. This has not always been the case, as she used to be embarrassed and ashamed of stuttering publicly. It took being fired from a job she loved and held for over 20 years to finally decide she did not want to live in hiding anymore. Pam then decided to start talking about being a person who stutters. It has changed her life.

Pam is a member of the National Stuttering Association and The College of St Rose (Albany, NY) Fluency Council. She edits and publishes two monthly newsletters for people who stutter, called "Lets Talk About It" asnd "Reaching Out". She speaks to teen and parent support groups, and co-leads a bi-weekly Parent Support Group. She has presented workshops on stuttering to different community groups, and at the national NSA conferences.

Pam is also on a Board Committee with Rensselaer County (NY) ARC, an organization serving individuals with disabilities. In her spare time, she works with Rensselaer County BOCES as a Career Counselor with high school students, and does workplace readiness workshops and recruitment presentations and tours.

My passion is ...

making an impact every day, no matter what I am doing

I know too much about ...

TV Land Classics

My parents always told me ...

if you don't stop rolling your eyes, they'll freeze like that

My childhood ambition ...

to help people

My favorite memory ...

having a girl I mentored call to tell me that she had her baby on her birthday,which was my birthday too.

Why I write ...

because I feel I express myself better in writing

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

Care For The Soul, The Alchemist

My first job ...

McDonalds

My best moment ...

presenting a workshop to 300 kids on stuttering & teasing

My inspiration ...

Sr Eleanor - my mentor in high school

Sciences > Psychology Change and how people deal with it

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My cheese keeps moving and I don't like it. I get used to my cheese being in a certain place and that's where I expect it to be when I look for cheese. Change is an inevitable part of life, but still, most of us resist it. One of the best books I ever read is Who Moved My Cheese? (by Spencer Johnson). The story is a fable about living in a maze and spending all of your time running around looking for, finding and eating cheese. Cheese is the metaphor for what we want to have in life, such as a good job, meaningful relationship, enough money, etc. I live in a maze. I think we all do. The ha...

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