Tampa Bay Wave names new board chair

Brian Deming, co-founder and former president of Tampa technology company Tribridge, was named 2020 board chair for Tampa Bay Wave.

Brian Deming

Deming succeeds Alex Sink, former Florida Chief Financial Officer, as board chair at Wave, a nonprofit that houses and services technology startups. Sink, a veteran banker who has successfully mentored several budding entrepreneurs to the executive level, will remain an active member of the Wave board.

Deming is a veteran tech entrepreneur with nearly 30 years of consulting and business leadership experience. At  Tribridge, he had overall responsibility for the development and operations of the company’s consulting services, corporate growth and acquisition, and strategic direction. Under his leadership, through a combination of organic growth and acquisition, Tribridge grew from a startup to an internationally recognized consulting and solutions firm, posting a compound annual growth rate of nearly 50 percent before it was acquired in 2017 by DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC), an IT services company.

He currently serves on the boards of several early-stage companies and is an active investor through Florida Funders, as well as a direct investor in local businesses. He is vice chairman of the board of United Way Suncoast.

“Tampa Bay Wave is excited to welcome Brian Deming as our new board chair, and I express my deepest gratitude to Alex Sink for her leadership this past year,” Linda Olson, president and founder of Tampa Bay Wave, said in a prepared statement. “2020 is shaping up to be yet another year of tremendous growth within the local technology community and the Wave organization. Brian’s proven industry and leadership experience will certainly be a key factor to helping us achieve our mission of driving economic progress in Tampa Bay by fueling startups into breakout success.”

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Deming said he’s looking forward to stepping into the role of Wave board chair.

“It is thrilling to see the incredible progress we are making in establishing Tampa Bay as a thriving ecosystem for entrepreneurs and early stage tech companies, and I look forward to working with this incredibly passionate board, staff and volunteers to drive continued growth and success across the region,” Deming said.

Tampa Bay Wave recently launched its fall 2019 accelerator cohort with nine technology companies. In September, Wave held a demo day for the 11 companies in its TechDiversity accelerator.