{"id":242018,"date":"2026-04-22T16:36:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T16:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/242018\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T16:36:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T16:36:33","slug":"from-wall-street-to-st-pete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/242018\/","title":{"rendered":"From Wall Street To St. Pete"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cathie Wood was born in California to Irish immigrants and estimates she moved with her family more than 10 times in her first 13 years. Today, the influential investor and founder and CEO of ARK Invest<\/a> is at home in St. Pete, where she moved her global, innovation-forward investment management firm in 2021 from New York City. <\/p>\n

Wood\u2019s vision for St. Pete and greater Tampa Bay is for the area to become a major innovation and technology hub, backed by the ARK Ellison Horus plan\u2014a $6.8 billion proposal to develop St. Pete\u2019s Gas Plant District as a master-planned innovation district. Wood shares how she\u2019s enjoying life in the Burg and why she believes the moment for the city\u2019s innovation economy to boom is now.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"At the All-In Summit 2025, Cathie Wood described health care as \u201cthe most profound application of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

The famous economist, Arthur Laffer, was my college professor when I was at the University of Southern California<\/a>. I consider him my biggest mentor. He gave me my first big break as an assistant economist in Los Angeles when I was still in college. I asked him to be an advisor to my firm when I founded it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When we decided to move ARK\u2019s New York City headquarters in 2021, we were looking at states with zero state income tax and places like Nashville, Austin and the Research Triangle. It came down to Tampa and St. Pete. We thought it was Tampa the day we left, but then we got to St. Pete and there was just something. St. Pete needed us more, and I think that was appealing to our young employees, too. It has a vibe, it feels like Austin ten years ago. We\u2019d love to do a twist on South by Southwest here that would be on both sides of the bridge\u2014something a little more World\u2019s Fair to attract people to this place that\u2019s showcasing new technologies and the ways they\u2019re going to transform our lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Wood speaks at Tampa General Hospital\u2019s NEXT Summit 2026.<\/p>\n

We can bring innovation to life here and maybe become the \u201cnew\u201d Bay area. This place has leisure, hospitality, entertainment, sports, music and art. But to strengthen the tax base, we have to bring businesses from outside and really make it much more diversified.<\/p>\n

I am getting more sleep here than I did in New York. Here, I get seven to eight hours because I don\u2019t commute. I walk to work. And when we move our offices to the EDGE District soon, I\u2019ll be walking even more from where I live in downtown St. Pete.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During a work day, I love every moment. I love what I do so I don\u2019t consider it work. I delegate management of the company, but I love every research and investing moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"ARK Invest, in partnership with Ellison Development and Horus Construction, submitted a $6.8 billion proposal to redevelop 95.5 acres of downtown St. Petersburg, including the Historic Gas Plant District, into a mixed-use hub for innovation, housing, culture and events. (Rendering Cortesy of Ark Ellison Horus)\u00a0<\/p>\n

A perfect Saturday for me starts with waking up when I want. I can really sleep 12 hours if we\u2019ve had an exhausting week, it\u2019s amazing. I\u2019ll get up between 9 and 10:30 a.m., then have coffee with my partner, Joe, my first love from the 1970s. We ended up having different lives, but we\u2019re together now. I curl up in a chair and we\u2019ll just share news. Then I like to take walks around St. Pete. I\u2019ll go to Snell Isle, and sometimes I end up walking 10 miles. We usually go out for an early dinner\u2014I only eat one meal a day.<\/p>\n

My personal trainer has transformed my life in an interesting way. I didn\u2019t eat red meat for 40 years, except for during a brief period when I was pregnant and craving iron. Now I eat red meat again. He didn\u2019t push it on me at all. He just explained what\u2019s going on and how to build muscle. I have an objective and he\u2019s helped me so much. I want to build muscles and just stay strong.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My biggest extravagance now is \u201cnot cooking.\u201d I\u2019m so happy we have Elliott Aster<\/a> at the Vinoy. We like Juno & The Peacock<\/a> on Beach Drive, too, the crab cake is unbelievable. Our place isn\u2019t far, so we often walk. Joe loves Italian so we\u2019ll go to Bonu\u2019 Taverna Italiana<\/a>, too. We had our marvelous Christmas and offsite parties at Urban Stillhouse<\/a>, and they couldn\u2019t have been more joyful: food, ambience and service<\/p>\n

\"\"During the 2026 Upfront Summit, Wood discussed the founding of ARK, the potential of AI, and the excitement of innovation. (Photography Courtesy of Clark Studio)<\/p>\n

The most profound thing that\u2019s ever happened to me is my children\u2014it\u2019s having them. I have three kids, and we\u2019re all very close. They live in New York City. I\u2019m trying to get them down here, but it\u2019s not happening.<\/p>\n

My parents immigrated to the US from Ireland. My mom came at age 18, she was a nanny. My father came when he was 22 and planned to work for his half-brother in a trucking company in New Jersey, but was drafted immediately into the Air Force<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My dad was a design engineer for radar systems during what he would call the dawn of the electronic age. He was a big inspiration for me. I was born in LA and we lived in Alabama, England, Ireland and New York, among other places. My mother had four children in five years and I asked her later how it felt to move so often. She loved it. She was so full of joy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I believe each one of us is put on Earth, for a reason. But we also have free will. I believe that the Holy Spirit guides us when we\u2019re kind of slipping off the path and kind of feel like, \u2018Oh, this doesn\u2019t feel right.\u201d When you\u2019re back on the path, it\u2019s like \u2018Oh yes, yes, yes!\u2019\u00a0 So that\u2019s sort of how I\u2019ve lived my life. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Check out our other InterViews<\/a>. Or if you\u2019re looking to advertise, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cathie Wood was born in California to Irish immigrants and estimates she moved with her family more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[25135,9322,106894,106895,735,202,204,203,199,201,200,1526,106896],"class_list":["post-242018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-ark-invest","tag-ceo","tag-ceo-women","tag-important-people","tag-investor","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}