Speakers

A retired Business Executive George Macedon has been a FANS Across America Foundation Board Director since 2006 and currently serves as President /  Executive Director.  Macedon possesses extensive experience in virtually all aspects of executive-level management.  With over 25 years of executive management positions within the Consumer Electronics Industry Macedon served from 1997 - 2001 as CEO for CommTek Communications Corp, publisher of home satellite programming and entertainment publications. Upon brief retirement in 2001 Macedon spent eight additional  years within the Financial Services Sector in national sales management and national business development focusing on risk management, electronic transaction processing, outsourcing services and identity solutions; retiring in 2009.  Macedon attended Arizona State University, is a Chandler, Arizona resident.   

Today’s presenter will be Chad Anderson, LPL Financial Planner with Western State Bank and Western Investments in Chandler ,AZ.  Chad has been a financial planner for over 20 years specializing in retirement income planning and legacy planning strategies.  Chad is originally from North Dakota and has lived in Arizona for over 15 years. He has been married to his wife Kelly for over 25 years and they have 3 sons.  Prior to joining Western State Bank Chad owned and operated Anderson Financial Group, LLC in Chandler, AZ.

(From the Rotary club of Austin) Recently presenting to his Rotary Club, Howard Berg said, “It all started in Brooklyn.” He is from New York, and as a child he felt that the “one consistently safe place” was the library. He attended college at SUNY Binghamton, while also working several jobs. He sought out ways to increase his productivity, and this resulted in completing his course requirements rapidly; for example, reading 48 books in only 3 days toward his science degree. He was able to complete both his degree in Biology and a 4-year Psychology program in only 1 year.

He shared several case studies of young students who have participated in his program to read and study faster. Most of them were younger than 20 years old and graduated college, law school, or post-graduate school so quickly that by the time they were in their early 20’s they were already securing successful careers.

Howard shared 3 main points of his learning program: Information overload, “waking up” your emotional state, and memory.

Point 1: The problem of information overload. We are constantly bombarded with an excess of information, and our brains struggle to process it. As tips to start teaching yourself to read faster, he shared these steps:

First, read the page of a book at your normal pace. Then, re-read that page with your hand/finger moving along each row and focus on following your hand/finger to read. Over time you will find yourself reading about 20% faster, collecting the information you need instead of concentrating on every word.

Point 2: The most important skill of all may be to recognize your emotional state.

Howard invited the crowd to participate in an exercise. Everyone stood and touched each of their shoulders with the opposite hand, then each knee, and then put a hand in the air, made a fist and said “I feel great!”

Howard explained that people, organizations, and companies need to be aware of both how they are creating emotional states (such as “I feel great!”) and of how they are extinguishing emotional interference (such as “I can’t do that.”).

Point 3: Memory. Most of us use visual and aural queues to remember things more productively than just reading the information. This relates to how one can better study subjects like math. While some students may not understand math concepts immediately or think they are “not good at math” it’s possible to explain it to them in a different way to allow their brain to pair visual and aural queues.

In another audience exercise, Howard presented a series of numbers, 1 through 10, with a picture of an object and a phrase that related that object to the number (for example “1 for pole”, “2 for shoes”, and “3 for tricycle”). This learning method was to make it easier for people to memorize an association of numbers.

We heard another successful case study about a man named Brad V. who was able to complete his undergraduate degree in college in only 6 months, while also learning Chinese in 3 weeks, so he could achieve his goal to be a traveling missionary.

Mr. Berg finished his presentation by sharing his desire to help kids and schools with potentially free/no cost programs that teach his learning method.

Rich Simmons is a retired professional from the electronics industry with more than 40 years’ experience as an engineer, manager and auditor specializing in the manufacture of high reliability, mission critical assemblies in the aerospace sector.  He has volunteering experience as a Scoutmaster with the Boy Scouts of America and as the current Program Lead of the Phoenix program of Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing, which provides physical and emotional support for disabled veterans.  He and his wife of 51 years were licensed Foster Parents in South Carolina and Arizona.  They have 2 children and 4 grandchildren.  He enjoys the hobbies of fly fishing, RVing and photography.