A staff shakeup starts a process toward drawing new kinds of businesses to the area, the group's president says.
By STEVE HUETTEL
Published June 30, 2004
TAMPA - The Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce is shaking up its economic development staff to bring a wider range of businesses to Hillsborough County besides financial services companies.
The most notable change so far is the demotion of Robin Ronne, previously a senior vice president who supervised the eight-member staff of the Committee of 100, the chamber's economic development arm.
Ronne has been reassigned to work strictly on recruitment and expansions of financial services firms. He retained the title of senior vice president but supervises only his executive assistant, chamber president Kim Scheeler said Tuesday.
The chamber has hired the Tampa consultants Gans, Gans & Associates to conduct a national search to fill a new postion of vice president of economic development, he said.
That person will oversee staffers targeting all other business fields, including bioscience, international trade, and manufacturing and distribution. The chamber has added a second international trade recruiter and is looking for a specialist in biosciences, Scheeler said.
Over the past decade, the chamber helped assemble a cluster of big-name financial services companies in Tampa, including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., which handles trillions of dollars in securities trades, announced plans in May for a major operations center in New Tampa with 500 workers earning an average salary of $72,000.
University of South Florida president Judy Genshaft took over as Committee of 100 chair this year, pledging to go after businesses in the bioscience and biotech sector. The staff reorganization will help broaden the area's business base, Scheeler said.
"We've made a pretty decent market for financial services," he said. "But I know we need to diversify. We don't want to be a one-trick pony."
Scheeler characterized the change as an expansion which doesn't mark a "huge dramatic shift" in the chamber's economic development agenda. The biggest change, he said, was assigning staffers to specific business fields.
Ronne, who was out of the office Tuesday and could not be reached for comment, came to the chamber in 1991 as a senior project manager for the Committee of 100 after working in banking, financial services and corporate real estate. He became the committee's senior vice president of economic development in 2000.
Reassigning Ronne strengthens the chamber's ability to attract and retain financial services firms, Scheeler said. "To try to have him doing too many things made it hard for him to focus on the financial services piece," he said.
