Michael \u201cMike\u201d Simas is President and Chief Executive Officer of The Florida Council of 100, an independent, nonpartisan organization of more than 200 of Florida\u2019s leading CEOs. Since taking the helm in 2024, Mike has focused the Council on translating Florida\u2019s extraordinary growth in people, capital and talent into lasting economic opportunity. Under his leadership, the Council launched Beyond Sunshine, a statewide economic roadmap identifying the industries and investments positioned to drive Florida\u2019s next generation of growth.<\/p>\n
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Building on that work, the Council advanced a unified economic development strategy for the Gold Coast, spanning Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, and launched the Gold Coast Tech Accelerator, connecting high-growth fintech and dual-use defense companies with CEOs, capital, customers and communities. The Council subsequently secured a $10 million commitment from business leaders Stephen Ross and Ken Griffin to support an economic development campaign positioning the Gold Coast as a leading destination for companies, entrepreneurs and investment.<\/p>\n
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Building on this model, Mike is leading the Council\u2019s statewide expansion of Ambition Accelerated. Prior to joining the Council, he served as Executive Vice President of the Partnership for New York City, working with Fortune 500 CEOs and government leaders on economic development, innovation and public policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Mike later served as Chief of Staff to the Co-CEO of First Republic Bank, working with senior leadership on strategy, operations and client engagement. Earlier in his career, he led Northeast Government Relations for General Electric and its businesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael \u201cMike\u201d Simas is President and Chief Executive Officer of The Florida Council of 100, an independent, nonpartisan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[113,28,30,29,802],"class_list":["post-415587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-education","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-ken-griffin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415587","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=415587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}