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Locals

MAKE IT TAMPA BAY

Meet the Locals

Tampa Bay attracts a lot of interesting talent and businesses, and they love to share their experiences with newcomers. Get the scoop from these local professionals and business owners who know what it’s like to make it here.

Saxon Baum

Director of Business Development at Florida Funders Growing up in a very entrepreneurial family, I always knew I wanted to start my own business, first doing so at age 12. For the past five years, I ran WeVue, an HR technology startup based in Tampa. While running WeVue I truly…

Tammy Charles

Founder and Chief Strategist, Inovo Strategic Consulting & Tampa Bay Spark Tammy Charles, MBA, is a nationally recognized and award-winning social change strategist keynote speaker, training facilitator and the founder and Chief Strategist at Inovo Strategic Consulting, a global consulting firm that helps purpose-driven leaders create innovative and profitable business…

Roman Cowan

CEO of Trash Butler Born in Jamaica, there were two things apparent about Roman Cowan from a young age: He had natural leadership ability and a thriving devotion to perseverance. It was this level of follow-through that led to his first big career break. After meeting the founders of College…

Jorge Brea

CEO, Symphonic Distribution Jorge Brea is the Founder and CEO of Symphonic Distribution, a digital music services company, which provides digital distribution, playlisting and marketing services, go to market strategy, and more for record labels, artists, managers, and distributors. With content distributed from popular artists such as Ozuna, Daddy Yankee, Deadmau5,…

Aakash Patel

Founder and President, Elevate, Inc. Entrepreneur Aakash Patel founded Elevate, Inc., a Florida-based strategic business consulting firm providing public relations, community relations, targeted networking and social media, in 2012, and he is reputed for making significant connections and achieving client results. Elevate, Inc. has served upwards of 200 companies to date. Q….

Lauren Wright

Founder & CEO of The Natural Nipple Founder, Lauren Wright, is a 27-year-old Nurse Practitioner obtaining her PhD at the University of South Florida. While studying the gut microbiome of preterm infants, she found that babies that weren’t getting mother’s milk were suffering fatal complications. This fueled her desire to…

Samyr Qureshi

CEO of Knack Samyr Qureshi, the co-founder and CEO of Knack, is scaling up the tutoring platform to serve more students. Knack helps schools to match students who have recently completed a course successfully with students who are taking the course to get the help they need to learn the…