Fill out this form to email this article to a friend
Executive Women honor TV official
Louise Thompson, director of the Tampa Bay Community Network, wins the Executive Woman of the Year award.
By HELEN HUNTLEY
Published March 15, 2006
TAMPA - Louise Thompson believes in speaking her mind - and helping you speak yours. Her unstinting efforts on behalf of free speech and decades of community service won her the Executive Woman of the Year award Tuesday from Tampa's Network of Executive Women.
"Free speech is not free at all; it costs a lot," Thompson told the group of 176 assembled to honor her. "You have to keep reminding people not to take it for granted."
As executive director of the Tampa Bay Community Network, Thompson manages the public access channels in Hillsborough County - channels 19 and 20 on Bright House Networks - under agreements with the county and the city of Tampa. That makes her the defender of earnest pastors and atheists, bass players and animal rights activists, and often puts her in the middle of controversies.
It's a role that comes naturally to Thompson, 60, the daughter of an Italian immigrant. "Every day growing up I heard "you're lucky to be in this country where you can say anything you want."
She earned a mass communications degree from the University of South Florida at the age of 39, was a freelance writer and ran her own public relations company for two decades while bringing up three sons.
Thompson turned the spotlight on private clubs that discriminate against women in 1992 by publishing No Girls Allowed, a book listing members of several of Tampa's swankiest groups.
She said her role model is Hillsborough Clerk of the Circuit Court Pat Frank, who forged a path for women in Hillsborough County politics.
Other finalists for the award were Chloe Coney, president of Corporation to Develop Communities; Kim DeBosier, president of Bayside Engineering; Cynthia Sinclair, president of Florida Resurrection House and Alex Sink, former Florida president for Bank of America.
[Last modified March 15, 2006, 01:31:19]
Share your thoughts on this story
|
News
Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
Print
Email story
Comment
Email editor
