Some people seem to come into the world talking and never experience a moment of hesitancy in saying anything to anyone, anywhere.

Those people probably won't be joining Toastmasters International.

Those who join the organization to improve their public-speaking skills come into it with comfort zones ranging from mildly nervous to terrified, from relatively polished to stuttering or virtually mute.

Mark Humble fell somewhere in the seriously nervous range when he joined a Toastmasters club in Santa Fe almost 10 years ago.

Humble, 49, is an information technology generalist II in the New Mexico Department of Information Technology. He has worked in information technology with the state for 17 years, starting when the agency was part of the General Services Department.

In 2001, a supervisor strongly encouraged Humble to join Toastmasters, suggesting promotions were much more likely if he became more comfortable with public speaking. Knowing little about the organization and its process, he joined a local group that meets weekly and includes a number of other state employees.

"I had a lot of trepidation at first," he said. "But after a while, I was doing it because I wanted to."

At Toastmaster meetings, members present talks they've written or give impromptu speeches. As they speak, others evaluate them on such factors as eye contact, body language, gestures and use of notes or other props, as well as the flow and ease of speaking. There are even designated "um" counters, people who keep track of how often a speaker inserts filler words such as "uh" and "um," Humble explains.

At one point a fellow Toastmaster and state employee challenged himself — and Humble — to shoot for the organization's highest level of accomplishment, Distinguished Toastmaster.

Today Humble is "more than halfway there," he says.

Along the way, he has advanced through many of the program's levels, earned a second-place award in competition among Santa Fe Toastmaster clubs and gone on to division-level competition.

Among Humble's favorite speech topics, and one that clearly takes his mind off any nervousness, is about a Christmas gift he received from an uncle a couple of years ago. It's a toolbox containing carpentry tools passed down through his family through many generations.

The oldest tools belonged to his great-great-great-grandfather and date back to the 1700s. In order to talk about them, Humble has done research that opened an intriguing window into his family history. Raised in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, he has traced his roots from New Mexico to Kansas and Oklahoma, even further back through Tennessee and the Revolutionary War and finally to England and Germany.

Humble, the father of a 12-year-old son, also is a longtime Boy Scouts leader and enthusiastic bowler. In 2009, he helped his agency raise more than $2,000 in a bowl-a-thon to benefit a local charity.

Although bowling, camping and family game night are activities Humble has always considered fun, in recent years he has surprised himself by finding that speaking publicly in Toastmasters can be enjoyable, too.

"At first it wasn't fun, but after a while it was like, OK, now I'm doing it for me," he relates. "When I got to that point, everything changed and now it's personal; it means more."

If you have news about a public employee, contact Fauntleroy at gussie7@fairpoint.net.