Tech's Potential: Recent Episodes
Paul Sohl
Hosted by the Florida High Tech Corridor CEO Paul Sohl, Rear Adm. USN (ret), Tech’s Potential explores the work and wonder behind human-centered innovation and its impact on our lives. Featuring conversations with bold leaders, industry pioneers, respected subject-matter experts and catalysts for change, it celebrates initiatives that have anchored the region and sparked its evolution since 1996, while spotlighting emerging centers of energy that will bring us into the future.
Synapse Co-Founder and CEO, Brian Kornfeld is one of the masterminds behind Florida’s premiere innovation ecosystem event, Synapse Summit. He is confident that connecting and supporting the region’s innovators will elevate Florida as a leader in high tech industry. Creating a community for the state’s brightest minds to share their latest advancements is central to Kornfeld’s vision for the future.
A rocket scientist and entrepreneur, Kornfeld initially struggled with finding the resources he needed to get his tech start-up business off the ground in Florida. Seeing a lack of available information and connections to draw on, Kornfeld started Synapse with fellow tech innovators that were experiencing similar difficulties. The group created a repository of resources for businesses to share what they need, what they have, and how they can help elevate one another.
Now, after years of building connections, holding events, and networking throughout Florida, Synapse is facilitating connections and driving involvement that have lifted Florida’s innovation ecosystem to new heights.
Learn more about Synapse and how your company could benefit from attending its programs in this episode of Tech’s Potential.
As CEO of StarterStudio, Dawn Haynes capitalizes on decades of experience, both domestically and internationally, in strategic business management and leadership to educate and accelerate startups. In this episode of Tech’s Potential, Haynes discusses how her work helps founders and drives Central Florida’s entrepreneurial spirit forward. Her passion for assisting up-and-coming businesses evolved from the lack of support she received while attempting to launch her own technology company. Haynes now takes pride in having supported many startups through their earliest stages, including Stax and Home Lending Pal.
Military service members transitioning from active duty to the civilian workforce face unique challenges. As a military spouse, Aleksandra Johnston knows firsthand how lonely it can be to leave a tight-knit community for new professional network or geographic location where you’re an unknown entity.
Johnston is a deputy director for Hiring Our Heroes’ Corporate Fellowship Program, Skill Bridge, for which she leads efforts to help veterans find new opportunities – including many in Florida, where there is a high concentration of companies interested in employing veterans with tech skills. Through a fellowship program and relationship-building with roughly 300 employers nationwide, Johnston’s team at Skill Bridge helps veterans identify their ideal civilian career path and facilitate a smooth transition.
Learn more about Skill Bridge and how your company can get involved in this episode of Tech’s Potential.
We’re celebrating STEM with Desh Bagley, the founder and CEO of TechPlayzone, director of the State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota coding academy and FIRST LEGO League 2020 Global Volunteer of the Year. Desh founded TechPlayzone over 17 years ago to bring STEM programs to students in the Tampa Bay area and has hosted a range of hands-on and virtual workshops.
The STEM visionary and mother of five computer science grads shares her secrets for getting kids comfortable and confident with technology.
On this episode of Tech’s Potential, we’re celebrating National Women’s Small Business Month with Kathryn Rudloff, executive director of the weVENTURE Women's Business Center at Florida Institute of Technology.
As one of only four Women’s Business Centers in Florida, weVENTURE helps remove obstacles for women entrepreneurs and provides expert guidance and mentorship to help their businesses succeed.
Sharon and Marc Hagle joined the New Shepard NS-20 Crew of Blue Origin Astronauts and became two of about 600 individuals in history who have crossed the Kármán Line, which is the boundary between our atmosphere and outer space. Today, they are breaking boundaries in the world of STEAM by introducing elementary students to the diversity of careers in space exploration and technology through Sharon’s nonprofit, SpaceKids Global.
In this episode, hear how their lifelong fascination with space led to two trips
out of this world, and SpaceKids Global’s mission to bring space to kids everywhere.
The Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention is more than a museum – it’s a haven for innovation, a community-building resource and an institution with a passion for invention at its core. The Cade’s story begins with Dr. James Robert Cade, lead inventor of Gatorade. He instilled his drive for innovation in his children at an early age and that everyone has the innate ability to create. With this foundation, the Cade Museum teaches STEAM through the lens of invention to kids and adults alike.
In this episode, Stephanie Bailes, president and CEO of the Cade in Gainesville, Florida, shares how the Cade’s mission to transform communities starts with fostering an inventive mindset.
You can’t build a diverse innovation community without fostering inclusive entrepreneurship. Underserved and underestimated groups across Florida often lack the resources and tools to get involved and grow their ideas into successful businesses. Dr. Wanda Eugene, director for the Collaboratory for Inclusive Entrepreneurship, has made it her mission to fix this.
In this episode of Tech’s Potential, Dr. Eugene discusses how innovation lives in underserved communities, and how entrepreneurs and ideas can be developed by leveraging relationships and meeting people where they are. Plus, learn more about the 10in5 program through the Collaboratory, which serves women and minority entrepreneurs by providing them with access to resources, training and mentorship.
If you think making games is as simple as playing games, think again. The serious business of game development can be fiercely competitive as companies on technology’s cutting edge strive to capture market share and innovate to keep up with player demands. This is what makes the collaborative nature of Orlando’s gaming industry so unique.
Take it from Co-Founders Adrian Lannon and Austin Pinzon of A Square Games and Simulation. In episode five of Tech’s Potential, they explain how partnerships and co-located offices with other game developers has, in fact, benefitted their business. As participants in hack-a-thon style game jam events, the duo has also experienced firsthand how collaboration with other industries, such as defense and health care, allows them to meet prospective talent and clients, and explore new avenues for business development. As Austin explains, “Not everyone can be an expert in everything … collaboration is very important.”
You don’t have to start a business to be an entrepreneur. That’s the idea behind the Innovation Lab at Hillsborough Community College (InLab@HCC), where program founders specifically left “entrepreneur” out of the name in hopes of reaching as many students as possible with the entrepreneurial competencies that will allow them to be more competitive in the workforce. In this episode of Tech’s Potential, Mary Beth Kerly and Dr. Andrew “Andy” Gold, business professors and founders of the InLab@HCC, share how they leverage the inclusive nature of a community college to successfully deliver a unique, 21st-century education; offer programs and funding to support founders in the earliest stages of business development; and accelerate the success of veteran entrepreneurs. Plus, hear why NASA turned to the InLab@HCC for a conversation in which few community colleges would ever have the chance to participate.
Imagine how different our lives would look if everyone had access to the tools, funding, mentorship and knowledge they needed to build technology and technology-enabled solutions for the everyday problems we face? The Foundation for Community-Driven Innovation is working toward this vision, with programs built to increase the innovation capacity of our relatives, neighbors and friends. In this episode, foundation Co-founder and Executive Director Terri Willingham shares how her team is awakening the entrepreneurs among us and empowering them to change our world.
Florida is home to a powerhouse State University System, with the University of South Florida, the University of Central Florida and the University of Florida leading the way as partners driving the Florida High Tech Corridor. In this special episode captured during Synapse Summit 2022, hear from presidents of our three partner universities as they join The Corridor’s CEO Paul Sohl for a discussion about their hallmark partnership approach, the role of universities in Florida’s innovation economy and how their universities are preparing the next generation of innovators.
In our first episode of Tech's Potential, The Corridor's CEO Paul Sohl, Rear Adm. USN (ret), talks about what attracted him to the region, his leadership philosophy and passion for this work. He outlines a vision for how The Corridor will remain a force multiplier, aligning opportunities and resources to unleash the region’s expotential.