Origin Story: Knack [Audio 24:25]

When Knack launched about three years ago, co-founder Samyr Qureshi and his team wanted to help college students find peer tutors.

Now, the company is using its app and its technology to connect students in tutoring and mentoring relationships on about 40 college campuses, while also evolving into a powerful tool for companies like PwC and ConnectWise to find talented prospective workers and for universities to raise their performance-based metrics.

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Why join Leadership St. Pete? ‘There’s a different vibration here’

The St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce began its Leadership St. Pete program in 1968, as the city’s great suburban exodus was under way. Downtown was already reeling from the westward migration of retailers to shopping centers and malls, and other business would follow suit in the 1970s and ‘80s.

In 1986, when young attorney Rick Baker went through LSP, downtown St. Pete was … well, it was sleepy, a ghost town of green benches and shuttered storefronts.

Baker is one of the leadership program’s most visible alumni. The intensive, six-month procedural includes a series of seminars on everything from city government to education, healthcare and the nonprofit sector – a “who’s who,” “what’s what” and “how do we make that happen” crash course in moving and shaking St. Petersburg.

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The Mainframe aims to elevate Tampa Bay’s black tech professionals

The Mainframe is a Tampa Bay-based initiative to support the growth of black technologists, professionals, innovators and entrepreneurs throughout Florida, said James Faison, organizer of the program.

The Mainframe hosts skill-building workshops and events, links entrepreneurs to mentorship and funding opportunities, and connects corporate employers to a local data base of black tech talent.

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