Blood Work

Chinoda, who joined Florida Blood Centers’ precursor as a donor recruiter, has risen through the ranks by aggressively growing its operations. Named director of marketing within two years after joining the non-profit, she was named executive vice president and COO in 1999 and president and CEO — the first woman to hold the job — in 2003. Along the way, she led FBC’s expansion, by either startup or acquisition, into Brevard, Lee, Marion, Martin and Sarasota counties.

Florida’s Biggest Blood Centers

In the process of growing, FBC has accumulated some pricey real estate. In 2002, for example, after Planet Hollywood went bust, FBC purchased the restaurant chain’s 200,000-sq.-ft. building and adjacent warehouse for $12.5 million and spent another $3.5 million on renovations. Had the building not been purchased through bankruptcy court, Chinoda estimates it would have cost closer to $27 million. FBC also picked up two other big buildings in 2005, when it spent $15 million to buy the financially failing South Florida Blood Banks. Of that cost, Chinoda says nearly $9 million went to buy large distribution buildings in Palm Beach and Broward counties.

The South Florida Blood Banks acquisition also came with a bit of controversy. In 2005, FBC stepped in at the request of board members of South Florida Blood Banks and representatives from the hospitals that it served. The purchase, however, put Chinoda’s non-profit in competition for donors with Lauderhill-based Community Blood Centers of South Florida, the state’s fourth-largest blood center. Dr. Charles Rouault, chief executive of Community Blood Centers of South Florida, wondered if Chinoda was out to monopolize the state’s blood supply. “I can’t rationalize why they purchased South Florida Blood Banks,” Rouault says. “That one made no sense at all, from our viewpoint at any rate.”

Chinoda says she has no plans to expand beyond FBC’s current borders. “I think we’re big enough,” she says. “We’re trying to manage what we’ve got. If a community or a hospital system says ‘please come,’ it has always been our mission to do that. But we’re not out looking to do that. We’re here to serve our community.”
Rouault still doesn’t think an Orlando-based blood center needs to be in south Florida but acknowledges that sharing the market hasn’t been so bad. In fact, he says, his agency has more donors now than it did when Florida’s Blood Centers came to town two years ago. “Competition does tend to keep you sharp,” he says.

Chinoda, who earns $385,384 a year, says FBC’s growth has been good for her organization, too. “You develop redundancy in the system, and we saw that to be extraordinarily powerful during the 2004 hurricane season when Hurricane Charley devastated our distribution center in Port Charlotte. But I have redundancy distribution in Fort Myers, so I moved everything to Fort Myers and was able to keep everything going,” she says. “No other blood center in the state has that kind of redundancy power.”

Sandy Shugart, president of Valencia Community College and a member of Florida’s Blood Centers’ board, says Chinoda is “an unusual combination of tremendous technical expertise — knowing the blood industry inside and out — but she’s also a very soulful leader. Her spirit and the way she engages people are really powerful. The organization’s bottom line is saving lives — not making money. You have to make the money in order to save the lives. It’s a means to an end. But they don’t confuse the means with the end.”

Away from work, Chinoda says she still struggles with the “demon” of trying to be perfect but has made progress. Among her volunteer work is advising women struggling to balance career and family. She tells them that the “perfect balance” between the two rarely exists — and that’s OK. “It’s about working with people to get over that illusion of perfection,” she says.

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