Kelly Hayes
Tampa Bay Partnership President and CEO Rick Homans will step down from his post in November, the organization announced Wednesday.
During the next eight months, before Homans’ departure, the organization will work to identify and hire its next leader.
“After what will be six years on the job, I believe it’s a good time for me to make this change,” Homans said in an email to members of the Partnership. “The Partnership is hitting on all cylinders, in excellent financial condition, and there will be no shortage of talented individuals wanting to take this job and advance the organization to new heights.”
The effort to replace Homans will be led by the organization’s chair, Chad Loar. Loar, who is also the West and Central Florida Regional President for PNC Bank, will work with a search committee established under the Partnership’s governing board.
Homans joined the Partnership in November 2015 and immediately began implementing sweeping changes to the organization’s mission and leadership structure.
Under Homans’ leadership, by 2016 the Partnership had transitioned from a publicly funded regional economic development and marketing organization to a coalition of CEOs focused on regional research, public policy and advocacy.
Homans is credited for the organization’s resulting impact throughout Tampa Bay from its transportation, workforce and racial equity initiatives.
“We hired him in 2015 to reinvent the Partnership with a focus on research, public policy and advocacy, and I believe he can proudly say ‘mission accomplished,'” Loar said in an email to members of the Partnership. “He’s built a strong staff, maintained our financial health and helped us make a collective impact on Tampa Bay through our regional initiatives in transportation, workforce, racial equity and, more recently, sea level rise and opioid abuse.”
Perhaps the most notable product of his tenure, Homans and his team led the development of the annual Regional Competitiveness Report, a set of regional metrics that compare Tampa Bay’s performance to 19 peer markets nationwide and provide a foundation for shared goals and community action.
Before serving as President and CEO of the Partnership, Homans led the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corporation (now the Tampa Bay Economic Development Council) from 2012 to 2015. He guided the economic development agency through a record-setting period of job growth and capital investment.
He spent the previous 32 years in New Mexico, where he served in the cabinet of former Gov. Bill Richardson. Homans started in the cabinet as Secretary of Economic Development and then as Secretary of Taxation and Revenue.
In 2004, Homans spearheaded the development of the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport, Spaceport America, and recruited the world headquarters of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic to New Mexico.
Before his government service, Homans served as President of a New Mexico-based publishing group and founder of New Mexico BusinessWeekly, which he sold in 2000 to American Cities Business Journals.
