21 Minutes With...

A bowl game looks like three hours of football on TV. Behind it is a year of sponsors, teams, broadcast partners and fans who all want something different. Clay Norrell is the executive director of three college football games televised on ESPN: the IS4S Salute to Veterans Bowl, the FCS Kickoff and the Red Tails Classic, all played at the Cramton Bowl in Montgomery, Alabama. He started as an inter...

Fall in love with the problem, not the product. Becca Brown is President and CEO of spARK Labs by ARK Invest, the incubator inside St. Petersburg’s ARK Innovation Center. Before that, she spent eight years at Goldman Sachs, then walked away to launch Solemates, the heel protector she took to Shark Tank and onto CVS shelves. Brittany Ward sits down with Becca to trace the path from high heels to ha...

From goalkeeper to storyteller. Jeff Attinella spent 11 years as a professional goalkeeper, nine of them in MLS, including time with the Tampa Bay Rowdies. In this episode he gets into the blame and pressure that come with playing in goal, unlearning perfectionism after soccer, the injuries that ended his career, and the second life he has built as a coach, children’s book author, and the brand an...

Giacomo Sanvitale grew up outside Milan, signed with a Swiss club at 15, and followed soccer to the United States through scholarships in Missouri and Oregon, surgeries far from home, and hundreds of cold emails before he landed in Florida. He was also filming the whole time. Starting in 2016, he became the first Italian creator to bring the college athlete life to YouTube, which made him recogniz...

Most founders fall in love with a product and then go looking for a problem it solves. Ed Buckley has spent four companies doing the opposite. Buckley is the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Scholar Education, the Tampa company using AI to personalize learning for students and teachers. Before that he built Peerfit into FitOn Health and launched Sword Intelligence inside Sword Health. Three of his...

Most of what looks like a tactical marketing problem is a diagnosis problem. Kevin Meyer is a brand and marketing strategist in Chicago who started out as an industrial designer at OtterBox. His way into the work was a question an intern asked in a design review that nobody in the room could answer: what did the customer say? He built a foam core mockup, spent a week talking to people in strip mal...

Most high performers treat the relationship work as something to get to after the business is finally working. Ludmila Woodruff's argument is that the waiting is the problem. Ludmila is a relationship and emotional intelligence coach who works with founders, executives, and high achievers — women and men — on the patterns underneath the performance. Having lived across four countries and cultures,...

Most people treat rules as an endpoint. Lauren Wittenberg Weiner treats them as a starting point — and that distinction built a $100 million company. Lauren spent her early career inside the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, working daily against U.S. code and federal regulation. When she followed her husband on military orders to Italy, she was told military spouses weren't perm...

Most people talk about money as a motivator. Tony DiBenedetto talks about it as a mirror. Tony co-founded Tribridge in 1998 and spent nearly two decades building it into an 850-person technology firm before leading its sale to DXC Technology in 2017. He's now Chairman and CEO of Appspace, and Founder and Chair of Think Big for Kids, a national nonprofit that has helped more than 8,000 young people...

The best opportunities often appear when everyone else is running in the opposite direction. Ryan McGuinness is the Founder of RPM Realty, a private lending and real estate investment company built on calculated risk, conservative valuations, and the ability to move quickly. His path started at 19, when he raised money to open a pizza restaurant across from the University of Florida, and continued...

The hardest customer in software is usually the most underserved — and that's precisely the opportunity. John Waldmann is the Founder & CEO of Homebase, the team management platform now used by more than 150,000 small businesses. His path there ran through a teenage web design company called Angry Hippo, a tuxedo rental shop, BCG, and KKR — until two friends opened a restaurant and he saw firs...

Most people assume that poise in front of a camera is something you're born with. Stacie Schaible's career is evidence that it's something you build — deliberately, and sometimes uncomfortably. Schaible is a 36-year broadcasting veteran, Murrow Award winner, and solo anchor of News Channel 8 at 6 in Tampa Bay. She's one of the most recognized faces in local news and someone who has spent decades s...

Most founder origin stories start with the big idea. Amanda Cuevas's starts with an honest admission in art school — and a sequence of pivots that didn't look like a plan until you see where they landed. Amanda is the founder and CEO of GlamNow, a concierge aesthetics platform operating in 15 states that brings licensed medical injectors directly to the client. She is a Tampa native who moved thro...

Growth doesn't happen where you're comfortable — it happens at the exact edge where you're not sure you can pull it off. That's not a motivational line. For Sheena Palacios, it's an operating principle. Sheena is the founder of NIFT Business Solutions, a firm built around fixing the gap that PE-backed trade companies keep creating: implementing systems without training the people who actually use...

This week, Brittany and Shayleen sit down with Elizabeth Kirchmeier, Director of Operations at SOF Missions, second-degree Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, former law enforcement officer, SANE advocate, gym owner, and CrossFit coach. Most people who dedicate themselves to service were first served by someone else. Elizabeth Kirchmeier wasn't — and that absence became the foundation for everything s...

This week on 21 Minutes With…, Brittany and Christian sit down with Hannah Davis Tsumoto, Head of AI Transformation at DoorDash. Hannah is responsible for integrating AI into marketing workflows across one of the most recognizable consumer brands in the world — and she's not talking about using ChatGPT for captions. She's talking about the fundamental rewiring of how marketing teams are built, how...

This week, Brittany and Christian sit down with Samyr Qureshi, Co-Founder and former CEO of Knack, and Principal at The Bath & Racquet House, a first-of-its-kind private wellness and social club coming to Tampa. Samyr built Knack from a dorm room idea to a B2B edtech platform operating across hundreds of university campuses nationwide. He raised from one of the top pre-seed funds in the world,...

This week on 21 Minutes With…, Brittany sits down with Melissa Santell — Founder & Food Photographer at FoodxFeels. Most food brands think they have a photography problem. What they actually have is a storytelling problem — and no amount of beautiful imagery fixes it if the strategy behind it is missing. Melissa has spent nine years working alongside Michelin star chefs and emerging restaurant...

Every game day looks effortless from the stands. That's not luck — that's operations. Desiree Phelps is the Director of Operational Strategy, Venues & Events for the Tampa Bay Sun Football Club, Tampa's newest professional women's soccer organization. She came up through minor league baseball, where wearing every hat wasn't optional. Now she's building a professional sports club from the groun...

Most content strategies are built around protecting the brand. Her strategy was built around volume — 10 TikToks a day, no approvals, and the freedom to fail publicly until something worked. Jony Lee is a content creator and former Head of Growth at Attention Seeker, the agency behind one of the most-watched organic brand accounts in her market. With 1.1 million TikTok followers and over 624K on I...

In this episode, Brittany and Christian sit down with Matt Joyce — a 14-season MLB veteran, All-Star, and hometown hero who spent six of those seasons with the Tampa Bay Rays. Today he's channeling that same competitive edge as an F45 Training owner and color commentator for FanDuel Sports Network. From the minor league grind to the bright lights of professional baseball, Matt built his career on...

In this episode, Brittany sits down with Liz Folce, Founder & CEO of Nakery Beauty and the Beauty Queen of HSN, a woman who has spent over 35 years in the beauty industry doing something most brands never bother to do — actually listening. From behind the Estée Lauder counter to sold-out collections on HSN, Liz built her entire career around genuine relationships with women. Not focus groups f...

In this episode, Brittany and Christian sit down with Bryan Lewis, Founder of Tenon Tours and CEO of Lemon Rock Motorcycle Tours, a man who has spent 25 years turning travel into something people actually feel. From spring break chaos to curated luxury across 19 European destinations, Bryan has built a career around one simple belief: that the best travel experiences aren't just planned, they're f...

Welcome back to 21 Minutes With… the entrepreneur turning streaming into real opportunity. This week, Brittany and Jackie sit down with Ronnie Eith, Founder & CEO of Boost TV, to unpack what it actually looks like to walk away from comfort—and build something that lasts. Before Boost TV, Ronnie’s path looked textbook successful. A standout college football player turned executive, he spent ove...

Welcome back to 21 Minutes With… a global wine leader carrying 300 years of heritage into the modern market. This week, Brittany and Christian sat down with Dupre Nell of Anthonij Rupert Wynes, a historic estate rooted in the Franschhoek Valley of South Africa just outside Cape Town. Before joining Anthonij Rupert, Dupre built his career working with some of South Africa’s most respected wine bran...