Avril Walker Stinson is senior director of the Minority Business Accelerator and economic inclusion at the Tampa Bay Chamber.  She is currently a member of Leadership Tampa, class of 2023, and serves, and has served on, numerous local boards and community organizations’ task forces and special committees including The Florida Business Development Corporation, The Junior … Read more

Dr. Kanika Tomalin oversees the college’s operations, planning and emergency management; strategic planning; institutional effectiveness; external affairs; technology services; sustainability and resilience and the St. Pete Center for Civic Engagement and Social Impact. Prior to joining Eckerd College, she served as the deputy mayor and city administrator of the City of St. Petersburg. In these … Read more

Linda Olson is the chief executive officer and founder of the Tampa Bay Wave. Today, the Wave has a national, and international, reputation and recruits technology companies from across the United States and beyond, several of whom have relocated to the region. Since its launch, in 2013, the Wave has supported 450 startups and, collectively, … Read more

Elizabeth Dvorak is the chief executive officer for Workscapes. She began her career in commercial furniture in 1991, with a top furniture dealership in Atlanta, Georgia. Nearly six years later, she decided to go out on her own and founded Workscapes. She and her husband, Richard, purchased a dealership in Orlando and relocated there with … Read more

Joanne LeBlanc began her career at Colliers in 2008, at the start of the Great Recession. At the time, Colliers was only hiring for a marketing position. LeBlanc accepted the position and used it as a steppingstone to learn the trade. In 2012, she moved into the brokerage side of the business and, in 2015, … Read more

In 1986, as one of few female students in her high school drafting class, Melissa Seixas joined Florida Power (later to become Progress Energy and then Duke Energy) in distribution engineering.  After nearly four decades with the company, she has served in numerous roles with increasing leadership responsibilities. In February 2021, Seixas was selected to … Read more

Bemetra Simmons is the president and chief executive officer of the Tampa Bay Partnership.  Simmons previously served as the chief strategy and operations officer for United Way Suncoast, where she led core operations functions, including finance and information technology and community investment for a five-county region.  In this role, she facilitated a COVID-19 emergency response … Read more

Andrea Gonzmart Williams began her career at the Columbia Restaurant at the age of ten, by filing in the corporate office. By the time she was twelve, she was working as a hostess at the Ybor City Restaurant and continued working there through high school.  She joined the family business full-time, after graduating from the … Read more

Jane Floyd is a branch manager at NFM Lending. With more than 30 years of experience in the mortgage industry, she has been recognized for her production earning the top 1% of mortgage originators in the United States, as well as seven national rankings on the Scotsman Guide’s Top Originators lists including 2021 and 2022.  … Read more