Guest Speakers
The Committee invites guest speakers on a regular basis to address our members and to provide informative and interesting talks for our membership on a wide range of topics.
The chosen language of Corona Plateau Branch is English, therefore all presentations are to be
conducted in English, although many of our members also speak French and Creole.
Guest Speakers will be provided with a list of Good Causes that Corona Plateau Branch has chosen
to support during the year. Guest Speakers will be asked to select one from the list, who will then
receive a donation from Corona on their behalf, as our Thank-You to the Speaker.
May 2016 - Susan Falatko
TOPIC : BREAKING THE SILENCE ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Susan Falatko joined the Foreign Service in 1999 as an Economic officer, and has served overseas in Bamako, Havana, Sarajevo, Geneva, and Kigali in both Economic and Public Diplomacy positions, as well as in Washington. She has a BS in Psychology from the University of Iowa and an MA in International Relations from the George Washington University. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, she taught English for nearly seven years in Tokyo, Bangkok, Prague, and Washington, DC. She is proficient in French and Spanish, but has also studied Bosnian, Japanese, Thai and Czech. She is married and has two sons.
February 2016 - Natalie Marot
Nathalie owns and runs a soap making enterprise in Calodyne called
In’Fusion Cosmetics. She told us all about the process of soap making.
She followed her talk by inviting us to visit her workshop, which we will hopefully
do in future.
January 2016 - Captain Dick Twomey
Thank you very much to Captain Dick Twomey, who spoke
about his Airline Company which he founded in Cold-War Berlin.
The 'ISLAND' West Berlin
During the long years of the Cold War the citizens of the walled-in, Russian tank surrounded, half-city of West Berlin had only air corridors to rely on, if they were not to be completely cut off from the democratic Germany and the world beyond.
Corridors that were height-limited, overflown by Russian MIG fighter aircraft, protected always by the Berlin Air Safety Centre which was staffed by UK,FR representatives, plus the Russians whose job it was to give "diplomatic clearance" to every flight.
Route rights along the Air Corridors had been parcelled up among the Berlin carriers long since, and
development of new destinations had stagnated years before 1981, when Captain Dick Twomey had first been given a job in Germany.
By August 1985 he had already served British Airways for more than 30 years: Should he leave BA and do something else? It seemed to him that there was plenty of opportunity, so he decided to do so, and started planning with a few friends.
Berlin Regional was incorporated as a UK Private Company in Dec. 1985. By July 1986 he had signed a contract with BA for 2 Jet-Stream turboprops at GBP2.7M each, financed by a lease agreement with Citibank, and with delivery promised for Nov.1986 and Jan.1987.
There were delays, the first one arrived 1st April 1987, they received their route licences and their AOC by 7th April 1987, by which time all crew and ground training had been completed. The first passenger flight to
Copenhagen was flown a few days later.
That year (1987) they carried over 200,000 passengers and at last made a profit. As a matter of pride, he also recorded that in Germany their operations had a proven punctuality better than Lufthansa's... who like German cars or Swiss watches enjoyed a good reputation for being on time.....and they never had to answer a single written passenger complaint.
