Profile: Jane Riley Leach

By FRED W. WRIGHT Jr.

© St. Petersburg Times,
published July 9, 2001

NEW POSITION: Executive director, Florida Blood Services Foundation and vice president of development, Florida Blood Services, St. Petersburg.

PREVIOUS POSITION: Director of major gifts, American Heart Association, St. Petersburg.

When Jane Riley Leach took over the fundraising reins of Florida Blood Services Foundation on May 1, she literally just moved next door. Florida Blood Services and the American Heart Association, where Leach was director of major gifts for the past year, are side by side.

She recalls one board member telling her that after an international search and a review of 78 resumes, Florida Blood Services "hired the girl next door."

Now, Leach has two titles and double duty. She reports to the chief operating officer of Florida Blood Services as vice president of development, and she reports to the chairman of the board of directors of the Florida Blood Services Foundation.

"This is a way to keep both informed," she said. "I'm the only link to keep both informed. It lets me attend all those senior staff meetings and be very much hands-on involved, and lets me work with the foundation board."

Florida Blood Services is the fourth-largest transfusion service in the United States. The non-profit organization collects and processes blood supplies for patients and hospitals, concentrating on Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco counties.

"We have hospitals and blood companies all over the world that ship us blood and we test," Leach said. Florida Blood Services consequently operates around the clock.

"One out of every 18 units of blood in the nation is tested here," she said. "That's 12-million tests performed on over 1-million samples."

An "almost native of Tampa" -- her family moved to the Tampa Bay area when she was 5 -- Leach lives in south Tampa. She graduated from Plant High School and attended Florida Southern College in Lakeland and the University of Tampa. She is single.

Before joining the American Heart Association, for five years Leach was executive director of development and law relations for Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Va. Before that, she was president of a Tampa Bay legal placement and consulting company from 1985 to 1995. And for the previous 18 years, Leach was executive director of lawyer recruitment, training and development for the Holland & Knight law firm in Tampa.

Is she still dealing with lawyers? "Yes. They have money," she said candidly.

When she lived and worked in Tampa, Leach said she was active in church, community and chamber events. "I know all the players, legal and otherwise. That really helps. I dabbled in fundraising all these years, with museums and other projects," she said.

Leach, 57, said she was motivated to return to the bay area a year ago because "it's time to give back. I started looking for opportunities to give back." She said she sees her dual responsibilities at Florida Blood Services as "a perfect job for me because it's balancing 150 balls at once, and that's what I love doing."

Leach plans to launch a fundraising campaign soon to help finance a storage bank for stem cells, part of a joint project with the College of Medicine at the University of South Florida.

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