Blood Work

In four years as CEO, Anne Chinoda has doubled the size of Florida’s Blood Centers. Now she faces a series of challenges, including younger donors who don’t give like their parents.

By the time she was in elementary school, Anne K. Chinoda was spending eight hours a day at an ice rink practicing the figure eights, spins, turns and jumps essential to becoming a world-class skater. With her parents back home in California, she trained at U.S. Figure Skating facilities in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Sun Valley, Idaho, and participated at the highest levels of U.S. Figure Skating competitions.

Trying so hard, so young, took a toll.

At 17, she grew tired of the relentless push for perfection, stepping off the path toward competing in the 1980 Olympics and into a conventional student’s life at Boston College.

Today, Chinoda, 47, doesn’t ice skate at all, not for exercise, not for fun. But the pressure to be flawless she endured from her ice skating days has served her well: Chinoda has built a successful career in an industry that doesn’t tolerate mistakes. As president and CEO of Florida’s Blood Centers, Chinoda manages a $100-million, 920-employee non-profit that’s the biggest community blood bank in the state and fourth-largest in the nation.

Since taking over as CEO in 2003, she’s doubled the size of the organization, whose operations span 21 counties in central, south and southwest Florida and account for nearly a third of the blood that’s used in hospitals in Florida.

“I love the preciseness and precision,” she says of the blood business. “We never close. And we have to do 100% of what we do 100% right all the time. There’s no margin for error. If I looked you in the eye and said, ‘99.8% of the time, I’ll get the right unit of blood to the right patient,’ are you going to feel good about our company? No. We must be impeccable 100% of the time.”

See the path blood takes from the donor's arm to the patient. Click here for narrated slideshow

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