June 8, 2023
Editor's column
Innovation's Force Multiplier
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director Kathi Vidal grew up in a Navy family. For a time, she lived in Pensacola, but her father’s duties also took the family to...
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Published on 6/1/2023
Lessons from Judy
This month, the University of South Florida is scheduled to open the new Judy Genshaft Honors College on its Tampa campus. It's an exquisite, modern building geared for collaboration and interaction. In many ways, its quite like the president emerita herself.
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Published on 5/1/2023
Job One
The state constitution requires only one thing of the Florida Legislature, that it pass a balanced budget each year. If they wanted to, lawmakers could come to Tallahassee, pass a budget and go home, satisfied they'd done their duty.
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Published on 4/1/2023
A Really Big Deal
Jorge and Julio Brea were just little boys when their family immigrated from the Dominican Republic to Tampa in the early 1990s. As teenagers growing up at the dawn of digital age, they loved both music and technology, and they figured out a way to bring the two together.
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Published on 3/1/2023
World of Wonder
As a young man growing up in a small town in Arizona, Jeff Hoffman had a goal of visiting 50 countries. He reminded himself daily of that life's ambition by taping a note to his mirror. The now-Florida based entrepreneur, humanitarian and mentor did indeed make it out of that small town — in a very big way.
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Published on 1/1/2023
Fight Night
The stage was set: Vivid red, white and blue images sparkled on tall screens behind two metal and glass podiums on the stage at the Duncan Theatre on Palm Beach State College's Lake Worth campus. A low hum of anticipation rose from the audience.
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Published on 12/1/2022
Sightlines
In the days after Queen Elizabeth II died, one of my favorite anecdotes shared involved a biographer who asked why the queen wore such brightly colored hats and coats. “I have to be seen to be believed,” the queen replied.
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Published on 11/30/2022
Hop to It
Drive south on I-75 from Temple Terrace, where the world’s largest orange grove used to be, toward Ruskin, where fields once yielded millions of pounds of tomatoes but now mostly...
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Published on 10/3/2022
Back to Florida's Future
Like many children of the Cold War era, I have distinct memories of some of the Apollo missions. I grew up in Southern Oregon in the foothills of Siskiyou Mountains, a place so devoid of light pollution that on cloudless nights, it seemed we could step out our front door directly into a blue-black sea punctuated by the moon and stars.
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Published on 9/1/2022
Common Cents
The United States Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida in Tampa is the third-busiest of the nation's 90 bankruptcy courts. The Southern District of Florida in Miami is not far behind as the sixth-busiest. From their respective views in the courtroom, Chief Judge Laurel Myerson Isicoff and attorney Stephanie Lieb have seen it all: The financial mistakes that threaten a family's security; the human toll of predatory lending; and over-extended parents who use their children's Social Security numbers, setting them up for a life of financial challenges before they're old enough to earn a dime themselves.
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Published on 8/1/2022
Miami on the move
No city has generated more buzz post-pandemic than Miami. A surging technology sector has blossomed amid the economic, cultural and geographic attributes that have defined the Magic City since Julia Tuttle pitched the idea of a new town amid an epic freeze, promising a warm haven from disaster.
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Published on 7/1/2022
Florida Ever After
When you move to a state with a fairy tale castle at its center, a certain amount of magical thinking comes with the territory. Fresh out of journalism school in Arizona, I came to Florida because I wanted to be a storyteller, and no place had — and still has — better stories to be told...
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Published on 6/1/2022
Retrospective
For the past four years, I’ve overseen the production of the Florida Trend 500, our annual list of the state’s most influential executives. I’m nearing retirement after 25 years at...
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Published on 4/1/2022
Price Tags
In 1998, not too long after I became executive editor at FLORIDA TREND, I wrote a column, “The Price of Panthers,” in which I used the Florida panther as a surrogate for the challenges Florida faces in balancing competing societal goods — growth and development vs. maintaining aspects of the state's traditional character.
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Published on 3/23/2022
Partnership Potential
Florida may receive about $13 billion in federal funds to spend on highways and $2.6 billion to improve public transportation.
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Published on 1/14/2022
Florida's Trade MVP
For more than 40 years,Manny Mencia has enjoyed a singular perspective on Florida's economic evolution...
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Published on 10/27/2021
Disconnects
The disconnect between data — empirical facts — and perceptions plays out across a wide range of issues.
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Published on 9/28/2021
Visions
In Florida's business world, the real standouts are those who go about business with some sense of higher purpose.
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Published on 8/31/2021
Vices and Virtues
A recent news story out of Tennessee took me back to the early years of my journalism career...
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Published on 7/30/2021
Cliff Notes
Brittany Birken and her team at the Fed have just produced a paper — see the link below — using Florida as a case study in documenting how the benefits cliff in the childcare subsidy program acts as a barrier to economic self-sufficiency.
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Published on 6/29/2021
Labor Pains
U.S. birth rates peaked in 1990 and have fallen below the rate at which our society can replace those who age out of the workforce.
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Published on 5/26/2021
Bus-Doggle
St. Petersburg sits along Tampa Bay, on the eastern edge of the Pinellas County peninsula. St. Petersburg Beach is eight miles due west across the peninsula, on the Gulf.
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Published on 4/28/2021
An Overdose of Bureaucracy
Florida's medical system displays a disconnect between care and customer service.
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Published on 3/29/2021
Learning and Earning
Fifteen years ago to the month in this space, I wrote about an apprenticeship program that ...
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Published on 3/1/2021
