82DegreesTech: 82° Tech Leadership

Leadership

Kathy Baylis - Sarasota EDC Appointee
Kathy Baylis is the president of the Economic Development Corporation of Sarasota County, the new public/private economic development partnership that will create and foster economic opportunities by working with their community and regional partners.

Baylis became the president of the EDC in October 2004 having previously served as the vice president of the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce for five years. She has served the Sarasota community in a variety of volunteer roles, including chairman of the Community Foundation of Sarasota County and president of the Venice Area Chamber of Commerce. She is currently a member of the City of Sarasota CRA Advisory Board, the Suncoast Workforce Board, and the SCOPE (Sarasota County Openly Plans for Excellence) Board of Directors and the chair of the Sarasota Manatee Airport Authority.

Baylis has a Bachelor of Art degree from Hillsdale College in Michigan, a Master's degree in Education from Indiana University, and a Master's in Business Administration from Nova Southeastern University. She is also a graduate of the Economic Development Institute.

Tom Frank - Past President
Technology Entrepreneurship Chair and Membership Co-Chair
Tom Frank is the former vice president of infrastructure services for Jackson Hewitt Technology Services at the company’s corporate technology center in Sarasota. He has worked 20 years in the IT field with 18 years right here in Sarasota, including a position with Arthur Andersen’s technology organization.

Frank is invested in the local area and seeks ways to foster the growth of technology in and around the Florida's suncoast. He is particularly excited about the ways in which 82° TECH can help promote technology initiatives in the area.

Barney Guarino - Board Member
Barney Guarino is a founder of Tempra Technology. He has been a director since the company's inception in 1991, served as the company’s chief operating officer until January 2000, as president since February 1994, and as chief executive officer and chairman of the board since November 1998. From May 1991 to January 1993, Guarino also served as vice president of The Financial Investment Group Inc.

From 1986 to 1991, Guarino was employed with Merrill Lynch, working with the divisions of Investment Banking, Business Brokerage and Valuation, Venture Capital, Insurance, Retail, Institutional Sales, Asset Management, and Financial Planning. Prior to 1986, he served as a financial consultant at Shearson-Lehman Brothers and was responsible for retail and institutional, sales including managed commodities futures and securities accounts. Guarino holds a Bachelor's degree from St. John’s University.

Martin Guice - President, Secretary, and chairman of the board
Martin Guice is the president and founder of Wisdom 3 ®, a business performance and technology consulting practice. Wisdom 3 specializes in marketing, business performance improvement, organizational alignment, and technology deployment. Previously, Guice was chief performance officer at DayStar Communications. While at DayStar, he also held the position of director of marketing and sales.

Guice has over three decades of experience in the telecommunications and IT industries. He was director of business performance management with Lucent Technologies in the Information Technology Division. Prior to joining Lucent, he was the western region general manager for AT&T and formerly held several regional and national marketing and sales positions with AT&T and BellSouth.

Guice’s education includes a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Jacksonville State University and graduate work toward an MBA at Fairleigh Dickinson University and Florida Atlantic University. While with Lucent, he participated in the executive education program at Babson College with visiting professors from Harvard, MIT, and Dartmouth.

Paul Hoffman - Treasurer
Paul Hoffman is the president of SouthTech Solutions, Inc., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Hoffman joined SouthTech in 2001. Prior to SouthTech, Paul was the CFO of a national unified communications service provider. Other prior work experience includes president of an accounting and tax software consulting firm; president of a local CPA firm; and manager of a tax software development company.

Hoffman is a Florida Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and a Certified Information Technology Professional (CITP). He authored and published a series of software selection and comparison books titled Accountants’ Tools and was formerly a columnist and technical editor for The CPA Software News.

Hoffman graduated from Kent State University in 1981 with a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration and was a member of the Kent State University track and cross-country teams.

Lauren Kratsch - Manatee EDC Appointee
Lauren Kratsch is the Business Development Manager for the Economic Development Council, Manatee Chamber of Commerce (EDC). A not-for-profit public/private partnership, the EDC has a staff of eight and an operating budget of nearly $765,000. Sixty percent of the funding comes from the private sector and 40 percent from the public sector. The organization works to improve the economic health of the community through the creation of quality jobs, increased capital investment, and increased flow of new dollars into Manatee County. The EDC's three program areas are industry development, technology development, and workforce development.

Kratsch is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Sociology. A member of the Economic Development Council team since 2003, she currently manages company relocation and recruitment and entrepreneurial/ technology development. She is a member of the FEDC (Florida Economic Development Council) and also serves on the Tampa Bay Partnership's Marketing Committee.

Bob Leonard - Events and Marketing Chair
Bob Leonard, owner and operator of Bolen Communications, LLC in Sarasota, provides a full array of marketing solutions for tech and industrial companies. Leonard has over 20 years of experience marketing technology in the B2B marketplace at Digital Equipment Corporation, GTE, and EMC. At EMC, he was the Product Marketing Manager for the Symmetrix, the company’s flagship intelligent storage system.

Leonard is the recipient of the 2006 Suncoast Advertising Federation’s Man of the Year Award. Bolen Communications is the PR and advertising agency for 82° TECH.

Dan Miller - Past President and Membership Co-Chair
Dan Miller leads investments and business development for Startup Florida, a venture development firm that manages a technology incubator in downtown Sarasota, Florida, and an angel investment fund.

Miller has helped scores of entrepreneurs start up, organize, grow, and exit their businesses through his company, BizTank. Previously, he was founder and president of PlanetResume.com, a pioneer of online recruiting. Miller successfully completed the sale of PlanetResume.com to CareerShop.com in 1999 and the sale of CareerShop.com to Personnel Group of America (NYSE:PGA).

Prior to starting PlanetResume.com, Miller was a principal and senior vice president of sales and marketing for Software House Inc., a leading provider of facility access control security systems sold worldwide to Fortune 500 and governmental customers. Miller sold Software House in 1994 to Sensormatic Corp. (NYSE:SRM)

Glenn Zimmerman - Community Initiatives Chair
Glenn Zimmerman is the director of IT production operations for Sarasota County Government. He moved to Sarasota in 1997 when he took a position with Arthur Andersen technology. During the shutdown of the Arthur Andersen office, Zimmerman was involved with the sale of the Arthur Andersen data center to Sarasota County in the hope of preserving technology positions in the area.

Zimmerman graduated from the University of South Florida with a Bachelor of Science degree in Managing Information Systems.