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<\/p>\nOn the occasion of the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary,\u00a0Power Broker\u00a0magazine is marking its own 20th anniversary with the publication of Tampa Bay Forward.\u00a0The book is a sweeping anthology of data, stories and analysis looking at the experience of Black Americans in Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n
Power Broker\u2019s biggest project to date both in scope and length, Tampa Bay Forward\u00a0includes essays by Tampa Bay community figures, industry leaders and innovators; economic, social, and political histories of Tampa Bay\u2019s Black community; profiles of Black leaders from business, the arts and sports; and analyses of the last 50 years of the community\u2019s growth and progress.<\/p>\n
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LinkedIn<\/p>\n
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Via The St. Pete Catalyst<\/p>\n
Gypsy Gallardo.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that the mission of showing all that is good and positive and future focused and success oriented about the community is more important now than ever,\u201d Power Broker\u00a0Founder and Publisher Gypsy Gallardo told the Catalyst. \u201cI think that vision and mission is fed by stories that help the mainstream community understand who we are, where we are, how we are moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay Forward\u00a0came about with three goals: To use data to cut through the \u201cculture war\u201d narrative around economic progress for Tampa Bay\u2019s Black community; to positively profile change and change-makers; and to give birth to a \u201cnew vision for progress\u201d 60 years after the Civil Rights Movement.<\/p>\n
Gallardo\u2019s decades of experience as a consultant in <\/p>\n
economic equity have underpinned Power Broker since she founded it in 2005. Her day job provided financial support in the magazine\u2019s infancy, allowing it to be a \u201cpassion project with a purpose\u201d instead of revenue-driven; but it was the national and international insights she gleaned from her work promoting equitable economic development that drive the data-rich insights in Tampa Bay Forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Through it all she has worked to drive a perspective shift in how the media tells Black stories. \u201cSo much of our coverage of Black people and where they stand, especially economically, is deficit thinking,\u201d she noted. \u201cIt\u2019s about gaps. It\u2019s about unfulfilled hopes and promises.<\/p>\n
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Via The St. Pete Catalyst<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of the focus of this edition was showing and celebrating, measurably, how much has changed and how far we\u2019ve come, especially since the turn of the 21st century.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among what Gallardo calls the \u201cwoefully-underreported story of progress\u201d are<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay\u2019s #1 ranking for Black per capita income amongst Florida\u2019s eight economic development regions;145% real income growth for Black households since 2000;265% growth in the aggregate net worth of Tampa Bay\u2019s Black households;1236% growth in Black-owned firms in Tampa Bay between 1997 and 2023, including 4.5x growth in employer firms, representing jobs added to the community;35% of Black workers are in managerial or professional roles today versus just 5% in 1960.<\/p>\n
Gallardo hopes highlighting the structural element of the lived experience of Tampa Bay\u2019s Black families will drive further evolution in how the media reports their stories.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that the individual success stories have migrated into the mainstream, but I think that the structural challenges, why they exist, and how we approach them in a positive light have not,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Gallardo wants insights in Tampa Bay Forward to drive not just greater recognition of the community\u2019s successes but focus the attention of local political, business and nonprofit leaders on the opportunities that remain to be achieved, both in Pinellas and beyond.<\/p>\n
In particular she encouraged the community to \u201csupport in standing up the next generation of leaders via the renowned INROADS program<\/a> that helped train leaders such as Nikki Gaskin-Capehart and other spotlighted innovators.\u201d<\/p>\n For St. Petersburg, Gallardo notes that building institutional capacity is a critical next step, one Tampa Bay Forward will help focus and drive.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s these groups in other major cities and population centers, where they institutionally anchor the agenda for Black economic advancement,\u201d Gallardo explained, citing the Equity Institute of Durham and the CDC of Tampa<\/a>. St. Pete, she noted, is one of the largest municipalities to lack such a group.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the community side that needs to really come together around this and then name the people who will carry it \u2026 and then on the majority side or the mainstream side, there needs to be some willingness to support those entities and to validate and invite them to the table.\u201d<\/p>\n Tampa Bay Forward\u00a0is available in St. Petersburg at the Urban League of the Florida Suncoast, 333 31st Street N, and in Tampa at the Black English Bookstore at 401 Oak Avenue and the Corporation to Develop Communities of Tampa, 1901 E Hillsborough Avenue.<\/p>\n Power Broker welcomes participants to a gathering of leaders on \u201cFuture Focused Strategies for Inclusive Growth\u201d Wednesday (Oct. 7) from 9-10:30am.\u00a0Interested participants can register here<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0Contributions to the INROADS program can be made to the\u00a0Urban League of the Florida Suncoast\u00a0<\/a>or\u00a0The 2020 Fund<\/a>\u00a0at Community Foundation of Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the occasion of the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary,\u00a0Power Broker\u00a0magazine is marking its own 20th anniversary with the publication…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-421041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421041","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=421041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}