May 17, 2024
Feature
A Bumpy Ride
In April 2022, a Fort Lauderdale company that customizes private aircraft for the wealthy invited media to the airport to tour its largest project to date, a Boeing 767 owned by Coral Gables attorney and entrepreneur John H. Ruiz.
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Published on 5/16/2024
Sky-High Ambitions
From The Jetsons to Back to the Future to The Fifth Element, flying cars have always been the stuff of science fiction, but they might be soaring through Florida's skies sooner than you think. The state has become a hotbed for flying car companies who view it as an appealing location for their emerging industry.
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Published on 5/16/2024
Fast Ferry
Spain's Balearia Group made its name moving people, cars and goods from the mainland to Mallorca and the rest of the Balearic islands off the southeast Spanish coast. It grew to serve the Canary Islands, north Africa and the south of France. Then it leapt across the Atlantic in 2011 to Fort Lauderdale to run a fast ferry to Freeport and, as of 2019, Bimini in the Bahamas.
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Published on 5/15/2024
Transatlantic Ties
Florida and the United Kingdom have a close relationship — and it's not just because the state is a magnet for British tourists. The U.K. is Florida's top foreign investor. The state supplies the U.K. with a wide range of goods and commodities, including aviation and aerospace products. British affiliates have total holdings of more than $18 billion in Florida, with more than 350 British companies employing 70,000 Floridians, according to the Florida Department of Commerce.
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Published on 5/14/2024
Railroad Revolution
Jacksonville is known as a logistics hub, which includes railroads like CSX and Florida East Coast Railway, both headquartered there. Yet other railroads, like Norfolk Southern, also have a large presence in Northeast Florida.
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Published on 5/14/2024
The Long Game
Robert Long, a retired Space Force colonel, was hired last September as president and CEO of Space Florida, the state's aerospace economic development arm. Long spent most of his military career in the U.S. Air Force.
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Published on 5/9/2024
Florida Icon: Suzanne Lewis
I was born in Wheeling, W.Va., because there wasn't a hospital in Blaine, Ohio, where my parents lived just across the river. So, you had to cross the river to have your children.
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Published on 5/8/2024
Slow-Speed Planning
As Brightline officials celebrated strong ridership numbers from their new Orlando-to-Miami high-speed rail line late last year, talk of looking west to Tampa seemed to pick up steam. Dozens of Tampa officials and business leaders led by Mayor Jane Castor spent a November day riding the train that tops out at 125 mph, with plenty dreaming of a day they can zip past Interstate 4 logjams.
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Published on 5/8/2024
Crossing the Finish Line
Graduation season is in full swing, with 71,230 undergrads and 26,503 graduate students expected to earn their degrees from Florida's 12 state universities.
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Published on 5/7/2024
Sister Act
The Entrepreneurs:
LATOYA STIRRUP, 42
LATASHA STIRRUP, 34
LATRICE STIRRUP, 31
Co-founders of Kazmaleje, Miami
For the Stirrup sisters, entrepreneurship lives in their DNA. LaToya, LaTasha and LaTrice were shown...
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Published on 5/7/2024
A Call to Action
Construction crews are expected to break ground later this year on what will be the largest Holocaust museum in Florida. The 45,000-sq.-ft. Holocaust Museum for Hope & Humanity will be built just north of downtown Orlando near I-4, on the site of the former Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce building.
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Published on 4/30/2024
The Iguana Trapper
For decades after iguanas got established in South Florida in the 1960s, locals could count on regular killer cold spells to keep them in check. But the region hasn't had temperatures sufficiently cold in more than a decade to kill them.
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Published on 4/30/2024
Game Changer
Catalyst Healthcare Real Estate, a Pensacola-based investment firm, recently announced a partnership with Florida State University to develop an FSU Football Operations Facility.
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Published on 4/29/2024
Bolstering Opioid Recovery
The Pasco County Board of Commissioners awarded $8.1 million to nine organizations that aid people struggling with substance abuse and mental health disorders. The money comes from a global settlement with opioid manufacturers and distributors and will be used for mental health support, medical supplies, transitional housing, case management and community outreach.
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Published on 4/26/2024
A Labor of Love
Growing up in farm country along the Florida-Georgia state line, Martha McGill always wanted to work with children. It was a calling, and she was also a bit of a workaholic. Her first job was as a pediatric nurse at a hospital in Valdosta, Georgia. “I worked 7 (days) on, 7 (days) off, and on my week off I got a job at a different medical center caring for children,” she says.
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Published on 4/25/2024
The Night Nurse
Lisa Nummi's pediatrician encouraged her to go into nursing. “So I went to nursing school and immediately fell in love. I was hooked,” she says. At Tampa General Hospital she kept ratcheting up the intensity, working in pediatrics, then pediatric intensive care, then the pediatric emergency room. Eventually she became a flight nurse paramedic, treating injured patients in a helicopter whirring through the sky.
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Published on 4/24/2024
Running the Railroad
By the time she was 12, Kelly Cullen knew what she wanted to do: “I wanted to help people.” Since she was 8, she had been helping her beloved Aunt Claire, a nurse, take care of Cullen's grandmother who was paralyzed by a stroke.
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Published on 4/23/2024
The Most Trusted
Recently, Wendi Goodson-Celerin was going through her late mother's things when she came across something that Wendi had scribbled in little-girl handwriting way back in elementary school: I want to be a nurse. I want to help people.
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Published on 4/23/2024
Condo Education
With many condominiums staring down costly repair bills and needing professional oversight, Florida International University's College of Business is offering a training certificate program for board members and owners.
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Published on 4/22/2024
Critical Mass
Florida gives rise to its share of class actions and mass tort claims. That's expected given its size as the third largest state by population and a history of pro-plaintiff laws and court rulings — a tendency GOP legislators and governors have had success in recent years reversing.
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Published on 4/19/2024
The Son of Immigrants
Growing up in Miami, David Zambrana was the child of Cuban immigrants. “Working hard and making a difference was at the root of what we heard at the dinner table,” he recalls. “My mom used to say, ‘Don't walk into a room and walk out unless you leave it better than you found it.' You know — ‘It's a gift to be in this country. Don't be a burden on anyone. You're going to go to school because you're going to do better than I did,' was basically the mantra of how my sister and I were raised.”
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Published on 4/19/2024
Educating the Fed
Gregory Haile, 46, is the former president of Broward College. He was recently reappointed to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta for a three-year term and is deputy chair of its board of directors. He spoke to Florida Trend recently about his role on the Fed board and his journey from growing up in Queens in New York City to achieving national prominence as a Fed board member and as a leader in higher education. He lives in Fort Lauderdale, is married with two children, is a graduate of Arizona State University and has a law degree from Columbia University.
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Published on 4/17/2024
Frame of Reference
Orlando Museum of Art Executive Director and CEO Cathryn Mattson recently stood before a handful of journalists and museum staffers in a low-key launch of the museum's centennial.
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Published on 4/17/2024
From Bedside to C-Suite
Audrey Gregory knows how to treat an alligator bite. Stephanie Conners learned fast that being a nurse takes guts. Martha McGill held two pediatric nursing jobs at the same time. And Lisa Nummi knows all the ways a hospital is different at night than it is during the day.
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Published on 4/17/2024
Burger Suing King
If you don't know Delray Beach attorney Anthony Russo by name, you perhaps know his firm's work. He sued Wendy's, McDonald's, Arby's and Taco Bell for alleged consumer fraud for ads that portray products in quality and portions superior to what consumers actually get in stores. He sued Amazon for suspending rapid delivery in the early days of the pandemic, which he argued was a breach of contract with its Prime members. He sued candy maker Hershey over alleged fraud in its Reese's packaging. (Wrappers showed the likes of jack o'-lanterns but the actual candy lacked detail.)
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Published on 4/16/2024
