June 2025 | Amy Keller
Florida’s higher education landscape has experienced considerable leadership turnover. More than a dozen presidencies have changed hands in the past three years amid retirements and politics. A CliffsNotes guide to Florida's other new presidential leaders.
JEREMY MARTIN
Florida Southern College, Lakeland
Martin took the helm of Florida Southern College last August, following a 16-year career at William & Mary University in Virginia, where he most recently served as vice president for strategy and innovation. The Georgia native served as William & Mary’s interim director of athletics from 2020 to 2021, leading a $57.4-million athletic fundraising campaign. Martin succeeded Anne Kerr, who retired after 20 years at the helm of the Lakeland college that’s known for its collection of Frank Lloyd-Wright-designed buildings. Martin is Florida Southern’s 18th president.
BROOKE BARNETT
Rollins College, Winter Park
Barnett will become Rollins’ 16th president next month, succeeding Grant Cornwell, who retires this month after a decade of service to the school. Barnett joins Rollins after most recently serving as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at Butler University in Indianapolis. Prior to that, she was the associate provost for academic and inclusive excellence and a professor of communication at North Carolina’s private Elon University, where she served for nine years.
TERESA ABI-NADER DAHLBERG
University of Tampa
University of Tampa’s 11th president is the first woman to lead University of Tampa since it was founded during the Great Depression. She succeeded Ronald “Ron” Vaughn, who retired in 2024. Dahlberg, a Pennsylvania native, has more than three decades of higher-ed experience, having served most recently as the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs and a professor of computer science and engineering at Texas Christian University. Before that, she was dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University in New York. In her March 2025 inauguration speech, Dahlberg said her top two priorities are increasing graduations rates and growing the university’s endowment. The school is also rebranding itself with a new nickname — UTampa — that she says honors its foundational nickname, UT, “while embracing our home, the city of Tampa.”
MEL PONDER
Northwest Florida State College, Niceville
Ponder took the helm of Northwest Florida State College in January 2025 following the departure of G. Devin Stephenson, who is now leading Florida Polytechnic University. Ponder, the college’s fifth president, has a business and political background. He previously served as an association executive for the Emerald Coast Association of Realtors and the president of Business Empowered, a Christian business association in Destin that he and his wife founded. Ponder was mayor of Destin from 2014 to 2016. He also served on the Okaloosa County Board of Commissioners, the Destin City Council and in the Florida House of Representatives.
TOMMY GREGORY
State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota
A Sarasota attorney who specialized in commercial litigation, Gregory became the college’s seventh president last July after the retirement of longtime leader Carol Probstfeld. Gregory served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2022 to 2024 and chaired the Judiciary Committee. He also served for two decades in the U.S. Air Force and is the founder of a small business called Raketes that imports and sells wooden beach paddles for “an outdoor, no-net paddleball game that originated in Greece,” according to his LinkedIn profile. In his new role, Gregory oversees a college on a growth trajectory, with approximately 20,000 degree and non-degree seeking students on three campuses (Bradenton, Lakewood Ranch and Venice) and plans for a fourth campus in the fast-growing Parrish area in northern Manatee County.
JOE ECHEVARRIA
University of Miami
Echevarria has described his new role as president of UM, which turns 100 this year, as a “full-circle moment.” Echevarria, who is Puerto Rican, grew up in a single-parent household in New York City’s South Bronx. He attended UM’s Patti and Allan Herbert Business School on a scholarship and graduated at the top of his class in 1978. After that, he landed an entry-level auditor job with a company that eventually merged with Deloitte and climbed the proverbial ladder to the top, serving as CEO of Deloitte from 2011 to 2014. He served on the UM Board of Trustees from 2012 to 2019, was named CEO of UHealth (the University of Miami Health System) in 2020 and was designated CEO of the entire school in 2022.
He began his interim presidency in June 2024 after Julio Frenk left to become chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles and assumed the role permanently last October. “I tell people this is a great university, but what you do after greatness tends to define you and that’s where we are today,” Echevarria recently told NBC 6 South Florida. His top goals, he told the station, are to make sure that UM continues to be a place where learners thrive, a place where integrated transformational research takes place, a continued destination for complex and quality care and a school that wins big in athletics. Echevarria previously served as chairman of My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, a program founded by President Barack Obama in response to the death of Trayvon Martin. The organization seeks to address opportunity gaps for boys and young men of color. Echevarria was also a member of Obama’s Private Export Council, a national advisory committee on international trade, and a member of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration.
