- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU PBS.

Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- Tampa Bay is one of the fastest growing areas in the nation.

There are now about 4 million people in the greater Tampa Bay Metro area, twice what it was in the 1980s.

Growth brings opportunity, but it also creates challenges.

To that point, a recent newspaper headline asked, can Tampa Bay keep growing without losing its soul?

You're about to meet the CEO of a regional coalition of business and community leaders who take this question seriously and are working to enhance our quality of life now and in the future.

Next on the Suncoast Business Forum.

- [Narrator] Suncoast Business Forum brought to you by the financial services firm of Raymond James, offering personalized wealth management advice and banking and capital markets expertise, all with a commitment to putting clients financial wellbeing first.

More information is available at raymondjames.com.

(gentle music) - Economic development efforts in Tampa Bay have paid off with robust population and economic growth.

For years, local cities and counties competed with each other to attract that growth.

Now, a coalition of business and community leaders from eight West Central Florida counties are working together through the Tampa Bay Partnership to improve the personal and economic wellbeing of area residents.

Bemetra Simmons is CEO of the Tampa Bay Partnership.

Bemetra, welcome to the Suncoast Business Forum.

- Good morning.

Thank you so much for having me.

- It's great to have you here.

Now, in Pinellas and Hillsborough county, the two largest counties, I counted it up, there are 36 chambers of commerce and other economic development organizations.

How does the Tampa Bay Partnership distinguish itself from all these organizations?

- Yeah, that's a good question.

I would say a couple things.

One is, the work that we do with the partnership is essentially complimentary to the work that economic development organizations and chambers are doing.

So if you think of it from a Fisher-Price perspective, economic development organizations, they have really two jobs.

One is to bring companies into their respective counties or cities or whatever it may be.

And two, expand the businesses that are there.

And then the chambers are gonna help you network within your businesses, get more business, meet other business leaders, that type of thing.

What we are is, we're a little bit different in that our whole organization is all CEOs or regional leads where it's like a chamber.

You could choose to put a relationship manager on the board or what have you.

So that's one way where we're distinctly different.

Two, we are a hundred percent privately funded, so we don't get any county money or municipal money, which all the EDOs do that.

And then three, we're not recruiting businesses to come here, what have you, we're literally data-driven, providing public policy advocacy and thought leadership on the most important issues that affect our region.

So we have great relationships with the chambers.

We have great relationships with the EDOs because our work is complimentary to what they're doing.

- Now, the greater Tampa Bay area is among the top 20 growth markets in terms of population in the United States.

And of course, that brings lots and lots of opportunities for years to come, but it also creates new challenges.

How do you believe, and how does the Tampa Bay Partnership believe this area is meeting those opportunities, but also the challenges?

- Sure, so I think you're absolutely right.

The secret is out that Tampa Bay is a wonderful place to live and a place where you can learn and grow and be fulfilled.

And so we're definitely experiencing record growth.

And then to that point, with that growth comes, we want it to be a big city, if you will, big metropolitan area, that brings big city, if you will, issues, which is housing affordability, the transportation and transit, those are the top two things that we're working on at the partnership, making sure that this is a place that everyone that lives here can fulfill that dream and live in that and have access to what they need in order to be successful.

The things that we're working on, transportation and transit that connects our counties, the talent pipeline, looking at it from a short-term and long-term perspective.

These are not things that are solved in one-year increments.

And it's certainly not something that's solved by one particular group.

And really the beauty of the partnership is that it's the intersectionality of business, government and community.

And so in order to do that, you have to work collaboratively, you have to be a convener, and that means you've gotta get people to talk to each other and spend time together who don't necessarily do that on a daily basis.

But in order for us to win as a region, we're gonna have to do that.

And you're absolutely right, that's not always the easiest thing to do and it's certainly not always the most popular thing to do.

- Now, an important part of the mandate of the Tampa Bay Partnership is to provide thoughtful research and measurable results to improve the quality of life and the economy of people in this area.

How do you go about doing that?

- Yeah, so, I played college basketball, so we have to keep score, right?

So we have to know whether we're winning or whether we're losing or whether we're tied.

The way that we do that is through something called our regional competitiveness report.

And what that report is, is it measures the Tampa Bay region against 19 peer and aspirational markets.

So how is Tampa Bay doing against Austin, Raleigh, Seattle, Washington, Minneapolis-St. Paul, so on and so forth?

And then we look at that over 60 different attributes.

So everything from economic vitality to educational attainment, to civic quality of life.

And then we use that data to say, okay, what are we doing well, and where are our areas for opportunity to improve?

And that's how we set our agenda of what we're gonna work on.

And the regional competitiveness report not only shows us if we're improving against that competing data set market that I mentioned, those 19 other markets, but how are we doing against ourselves, how we were doing last year?

So what you'll see in the data is sometimes we've improved from a quantitative standpoint.

So we got better in the numbers, but other markets got better than we did.

So we may not have improved ranking rise, even though we've got better in whatever that particular measurable item is.

But yes, it is a scorecard.

We do that every year through an event called the State of the Region.

And we put together this report every year in partnership with the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay, United Way Suncoast.

And our data partner in this is University of South Florida's Muma College of Business.

So there are good things that come out of it, but it is truly an honest assessment.

- Now, the Tampa Bay Partnership was actually started in the 1990s, but over the years, its mission has pivoted and changed.

How would you describe the mission now compared to how it's evolved over time?

- The biggest distinction is, when we began, we were, essentially, a regional economic development organization.

So we ran really sidecar with the county-wide economic development organization.

So say, for instance, a lead came in through Enterprise Florida for an opportunity in Pasco, that lead would be sent to the Pasco EDC, as well as the partnership.

And we would help market that opportunity, tell the Pasco story, tell the Tampa Bay story.

And then as our county EDOs got more sophisticated, better skilled at what they were doing, we said, we don't really need to duplicate their efforts, but there's absolutely still a need for a regional voice for the business community.

And that's when we made The Pivot back in 2016, which I love the term 'cause I played basketball.

It's a basketball term.

So we made a pivot into what we are today, which is again, that data-driven, public policy thought leadership and advocacy organization.

So that's the biggest difference between what we were doing in say, the first 15 to 20 years that we existed and what we've been doing the last five years.

- Let's talk about your formative years.

Let's talk about growing up in your family.

- Little Bemetra.

(Bemetra laughing) Yeah, so it was great.

I think I grew up really unique, if you will.

My dad is a retired Colonel Air Force chaplain and my mom's retired public guidance counselor.

And I grew up really everywhere.

We moved about every two years or so.

So I grew up in about 10 states.

We lived overseas.

It was a wonderful way to grow up.

When you're living overseas, you're not a southerner or a northerner, you're an American.

That is the first and most important thing.

So that was kind of a unique way to grow up.

And then having an opportunity to live in places like Wyoming and Nebraska, California versus Illinois or Tennessee or Alabama, you just really have a big view of things.

But both of my parents are from Memphis, Tennessee, blues and barbecue.

So it is the closest thing that I have to a hometown.

We would spend summers with my grandparents and our extended family, cousins and whatnot.

So it was a really great way to grow up because you got a chance to see all these different places and different cultures and different way of looking at things.

And then you go for the summer and just kind of being this really Southern close-knit family for a couple of months every summer, which was cool.

- Tell us about your siblings and about growing up as a twin.

- Yeah.

(Bemetra chuckling) So growing up as a twin, it's just fun, but especially in the way that I grew up, because you have a built-in best friend.

So you don't ever have to worry about, am I going to have someone to eat lunch with, or is there anyone at the school that's going to talk to me?

Because you have somebody that you know to do that with.

So yeah, I have a twin sister who she's actually an attorney, who does corporate bankruptcy and restructuring law in Houston.

And then I have a younger brother.

We used to call him my little brother, he's actually our younger brother and he and his family live in Atlanta and he's a CEO of a not-for-profit in the Atlanta community.

So we're very close.

Education in my family was really stressed as a difference maker, was something that my grandparents stressed and then my parents, and I believe in it wholeheartedly and I'm a product of public schools until I got to college.

But growing up wherever we live, we always went to public schools.

So yeah, it was great.

And then of course, church with my dad being a chaplain.

- [Geoffrey] After high school, you went to Christian Brothers University in Memphis.

- [Bemetra] I did.

- [Geoffrey] And did you know what you wanted to study?

What you wanted to be in a career?

- I knew I wanted to do something in business.

I didn't exactly know what that was.

Especially with my father being in the military, I wasn't around corporate America, I wasn't around business people.

So quite honestly, I didn't know a lot about business, but we had a family friend who was in banking and he became the first African American regional president of a bank in Tennessee.

And I thought he was smart and thought he was sharp, and there was a lot about him that I admired and that's how I ended up getting into banking ultimately, it's because of Mr. Yancy.

But I had to kind of find my way there.

My first job outta college, I sold networks.

So I sold IT networks.

Back then, it was data networks, was on the raise and I date myself X.25 Packet Switched networks.

But it was fun, I learned about people, I learned about negotiating.

I learned about overcoming difficult circumstances.

If a server wasn't working or that type of thing.

And all of those skills, ultimately, once I went to business school helped me in banking, 'cause they're very complimentary, as you know, to what you do as a banker and dealing with your clients.

Yeah.

- In 2002, after five years in the business community and technology, you went to graduate school Wake Forest MBA.

What was the goal?

- Went to Wake Forest grade school, learned a lot.

And once I got to Wake, I started to try to figure out how I wanted to use my business degree.

And I really just, I'm kind of a nerd, just took a lot of informational interviews.

So I met with institutional bond traders, I met with guys that were financial advisors.

I met with a guy who was doing financial models for insurance companies.

I met with financial models for real estate firms.

You run the gamut, I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

And then I had an opportunity to talk with Mr. Yancy and he was explaining commercial banking to me.

I was back in Memphis and I was like, wait, that sounds like a wonderful job because it will take all of my sales experience that I had, but give me a quantitative way to utilize it.

And then I thought every day would be a fresh day, a new day, 'cause one day you might be with a church to look at financing a new building for them.

You might be with a residential developer the next day after that, you might be with somebody that owns a daycare the day after that.

So I thought, well, that'll be great.

And so that's how I decided to get into commercial banking.

- So you started in commercial banking in 2004.

In 2011, you took a senior banking position here in Tampa Bay area, which was a really difficult time.

- [Bemetra] Yes.

- That was during the great recession.

- That was during the great recession and I was working for BB&T bank, and at the time- - [Geoffrey] What was your role?

- I was the Hillsborough market president.

So I came down here to lead our commercial banking efforts in Hillsborough county.

And there was really a couple things that we wanted to get done at the bank at that time.

One is, we had a lot of Colonial Bank folks that were at BB&T 'cause we had taken over Colonial after they had failed.

So we didn't have a lot of BB&T lifers here and they wanted someone who could come and infuse the BB&T culture and do things the BB&T way.

And if you know anything about BB&T, it's probably one of the strongest cultures of any organization that I've ever worked in.

You're absolutely right, it was the coming on the hills of the great recession, there were a lot of clients who were not very happy with us.

As you know, banks take measured risk and we were trying to shore up that risk, which we had a lot of real estate loans, we had a lot of risk to shore up.

But it was a definitely great time to cut your teeth and learn.

And Tampa, I didn't know anything about Tampa.

I'd only been here once before that and that was to go something social.

I came down here for a Women's Final Four in 2008.

So it was a great time to be here though.

And it's grown tremendously in the 11 years since I've been here.

- In 2020, you pivoted in your career, you went from the commercial banking sector to the nonprofit sector and you joined United Way Suncoast.

Big change in direction.

What led you to do that?

- There were a couple things.

One, I was interested in having an opportunity to marry my personal value system with what I was doing professionally.

United Way is a great organization, I thought that would be great.

Second, I thought it would've given me an opportunity to expand my skillset as a leader.

I would have an opportunity to learn and do more with operations and IT and HR, and I, at the time, was running our annual investment process.

But also gave me an opportunity to have board interaction on the other side of it.

Obviously, I'd sat on boards, but managing board relationships and board interaction.

And United Way Suncoast, similar to the partnership is a multi-county organization.

So believe it or not, your board members in Manatee don't always have the same priorities and focus as your board members say, in Hillsborough, and learning to manage that and prioritize that was really intriguing to me.

But I didn't factor in that I was gonna join a month before the global pandemic began.

So, that was definitely, talk about seeing everything that United Way does really quickly and very fast, and then probably one of the most important times in our region, yeah.

- Then in 2021, the leadership role, the CEO position at the Tampa Bay Partnership opened up.

You didn't apply for the job, they came after you and there were over a hundred applicants for the job and you were selected.

What resonates about the Tampa Bay Partnership for you?

- Well, first of all, I feel fortunate to be able to do this work on a daily basis for a couple reasons, because I know that the work that we do, it matters.

Not only does it matter today, it will matter when two people like us are having this conversation 15 years from now.

And so to have an opportunity to have your hand in that, to have a voice in that is really powerful.

And then being a military kid where I haven't lived somewhere for long period of time, this is the longest place I've ever lived, I feel like this is my forever home, I feel like a total Tampanian.

I'm totally bought into all of the Florida Cool Aid.

And so, having a chance to come here and do this work is really powerful.

The partnership matters because like I said earlier, I can't think of anything else in our region that connects business, community, and government.

So a lot of the times when we're looking at things, we're only looking at it from a business lens or we're only looking at it from an altruistic or civic lens or we're only looking at it from a political lens, but in reality, we get a chance to bring all those things together and then also make sure that we're giving it that overlay, that look, that viewpoint that someone may not have actually thought about.

So I'll give you an example.

I was in a meeting yesterday where we were discussing the transportation tax in Hillsborough.

And one of the gentlemen on the call said, "I mean, does the one cent really matter that much?"

And I said, "Well, if you think about what the average income is here in Tampa Bay at $53,000 approximately, $53,000, and you factor that into food costs are up 30% year over year, housing costs are up 40% for some people year over year or more, that one cent does matter because there's no public transportation for them to get on."

So they can't make a decision like you can and say in New York or Chicago, "Hey, I'm not gonna drive this week 'cause I'm gonna save money."

That isn't an option here right now.

So things like that I think are why this work we do matters and why I'm excited to be in this role to help advance it.

- When you evaluate the partnership's regional competitiveness report, which you do every year, how would you evaluate the greatest successes that are identified in this report?

- So some of the things that we're doing really well, we've seen great improvement and we're doing great in terms of finishing in the top quadrant on high school graduation rates.

Personal net worth has gone up.

That's largely though, been driven by our increased housing prices.

So five years ago, we're like, "Housing prices are increasing, that's awesome."

And that is awesome if it's increasing three, four, 5% a year.

What's going up 40% a year, you have to ask yourself, is that truly an asset or is that becoming a liability?

We're getting better in our civic quality, like the number of cultural attractions that we have per 10,000 residents, things of that nature.

And then there's just some areas where we just haven't made much traction in five years at all.

And transportation is truly that.

In every metrics that we use, we are either 19th or 20th, whether that's pedestrian and bicycle deaths, whether that's transit options, whether that's transit frequency.

For example, most of our bus schedules around the region operate on what many cities would consider to be a weekend schedule.

So that makes it very difficult for people to be able to get to work and use public transportation in a way to do that.

So, we got some things we're doing well, it's really a mixed bag right now, but we are definitely not at a place where we can rest on our laurels and say, "Everything is awesome."

But again, we have have some things that we're doing well, some things we need to do better.

- Well, how do we tackle things like housing affordability, like equity?

- Well, I think, again, getting the right players in the room that can advance that.

So, whether that's talking with United Way Suncoast, whether that's talking with our banking partners that finance affordable housing projects, whether that's talking with our insurance providers, whether that's talking with our utility companies.

And those are the types of things that the partnership does is we will convene all of those folks together.

'Cause when you're talking about housing affordability, you're not just talking about your rent, you're talking about your rent, your utilities, your insurance, it's all of that combined.

And what does that look like and what resources do people need and what recommendations can we come to as a collective group to make to our elected officials on how to advance that?

So that's really the beauty of the partnership and the power of the partnership.

Because I can't think of any organization that could get all of those folks in a room together, not siloed, but collectively to say, "Hey, how can we advance this issue?"

The way people ask me all the time how are you gonna know if you're being successful?

When we look at the regional competitiveness report and we're in the top quadrant for everything.

I mean, that's lofty, but that's how we're going to know that we're being successful.

Obviously, along the way, we make incremental progress to get there.

As I tell people, when you're eight and 20 on a basketball team, your goal isn't to win the national championship the next year, your goal the next year is to have a winning season.

Maybe the year after that is to win the conference tournament.

The year after that, maybe you get to the final four.

But you can't.

I mean, yes, you'd like to win the national championship when you're eight and 20, but do you really have the talent and the resources to turn it around in one year?

Probably not.

- Based on your research, how is Tampa Bay doing in terms of workforce development, workforce training and preparation?

- So there's some things that we're doing really well, like I said.

We've gotten better with apprenticeship opportunities and making sure people know about that, and really partnering with state colleges, whether it be Pasco State Hernando or St. Pete College and saying, "Hey, what do you need?"

For example, I don't know if people know, they have a great partnership with Duke Energy, St. Pete College does, where they've created this line worker program where you can get a certification.

So we've kind of gotten, I heard Dr. Williams say something I thought was very powerful one time, she says, "A degree may not be for everybody, but college could be for everybody."

You can go to college, get the certification that you need to get jobs.

So I think we're getting better there.

The most disturbing stat that we have where we need some improvement is what we call disconnected youth.

So residents that are between the ages of 16 and 24, there's a large group of them that are neither enrolled in school, nor are they working.

And we're trying to figure out why that is and where they are.

Because in 10 years, they're gonna be 26 to 34 and we need those folks in the workforce, especially when you look at some of our average age.

One of the things that's come out of COVID is a lot of people have decided to retire and that's creating shortages.

And not just like plumbers and HVAC guys, but bankers and lawyers and things like that.

So we need our youth to be connected and working and getting skills so that they can backfill those roles down the road.

Does that make sense?

- You and your sister Demetra actually have a business that you started together, a unique business called Corporate Homie.

- [Bemetra] Right.

- Tell us about Corporate Homie.

- Yeah, so first of all, yes, you heard that correctly.

My twin sister's name is Demetra because that was the thing in the seventies, twins had rhyming names for whatever reason.

(Bemetra laughing) So yeah, we actually started this, essentially, as a passion project.

So what would happen is we would talk with one another or talk with our friends, and people would not necessarily complain but share different experiences that they were having in corporate America.

And what we found is it didn't matter if they worked at a law firm or an architectural firm or a fortune 500 company, everyone was experiencing the same thing.

And when I say everyone, we're talking about women and people of color.

And so we decided to start Corporate Homie to share our experiences, things that we've done.

So the idea is if you have friends at work, homies at work, this is the type of advice that we give out.

And so we started it out as a podcast and really probably the first 25 or 30 episodes are really just our personal experiences, things that we experienced in our career.

Now, most of the topics come from the listeners.

They send us in messages that says, "Hey, can you do an episode about this?"

Or "I'm experiencing this at work."

Sometimes I see people out and they say, "Oh, Corporate Homie, will you guys do a topic on this?"

And then that is now morphed into a little business opportunity where organizations bring us in.

But it's been a lot of fun.

Obviously, with Demetra and I living in different states, it gives us an opportunity to spend more time together, see each other more throughout the year.

So it's been a wonderful experience.

Thank you for asking me about it.

(Bemetra chuckling) - Well, Bemetra, I'd like to thank you so much for being our guest today.

- Well, thank you so much for having me and thank you for letting me share the great work that the Tampa Bay Partnership is doing.

And I hope when I get a chance to come back, we can say that we've moved up the food chain in a number of these metrics.

So thank you very much.

- We'll look forward to that.

- [Bemetra] Yeah.

- If you'd like to see this program again or any of the CEO profiles in our Suncoast Business Forum archive, you can find them on the web at wedu.org/sbf.

Thanks for joining us for the Suncoast Business Forum.

(gentle music)