I have been building STEM companies and fighting this battle since moving here in 2000. We had a great opportunity to address the loss and lack of STEM talent in the region. I worked on the concept with Mark Pritchett, Jon Thaxton, and Kevin Cooper at Gulf Coast Community Foundation for months almost two years ago and while Mark wanted to see it come to fruition the board voted against it. Our community lost and continues to lose much of its top talent for several reasons that have gone unaddressed for decades. We have the foundation in our classrooms and STEM programs are growing but most K-12 students leave and go away to college, especially those focused on STEM fields, and many never return because of opportunities afforded to them elsewhere. We also lose top talent that comes here to attend Ringling College and New College. When they graduate they leave because they see more opportunities in STEAM fields outside the area.

The UF Innovation Station appears to be a great addition and the fact Voalte’s Trey Lauderdale worked so hard to get Dr. Cammie Abernathy to choose our location says a lot about his commitment to our future. Seeing the results of its addition will take time but it definitely helps fill a gap in the engineering space if we can make the additional changes to retain students after graduation.

Housing affordability is tied to wealth over quality of life in the region. We can paint any picture we like but the truth is simple. When we call affordable housing a studio that rents for $1,750 a month we should be like Manhattan or San Francisco. The only way to bridge the gap is to create higher paying jobs and those are STEM or STEAM jobs. What will happen as the highly affluent Baby Boomer generation goes away? While we have amassed a plethora of million-dollar homes, fine dining and arts, how will it survive when the next generation chooses to live elsewhere?

As for becoming Boston or Seattle, that should not be where we focus. Those cities play to their strengths and we should as well. That said, any city that does not focus on STEM will lose over the next decade.  STEM/STEAM jobs are now tied to every aspect of our lives. In our increasingly interconnected world virtually everything we do will be touched by technology. Internet of Things, Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence are our future. Mobile browsers surpassed all other forms in 2010. When I sold one of my companies, the first mobile content delivery platform, to Akamai in 2010, it was deployed to over 100,000 servers around the world that serve up 80 percent of the internet content consumed daily. Just over 40 percent of the people in U.S. have a piece of wearable technology and the number grows daily. We have almost twice the number of mobile phones as we do human beings. Our virtual assistants (Siri, Google Home and Alexa) are used by 35 percent of the population multiple times each day. What about how technology is being used to regenerate our oceans, create sustainable food sources or for health fitness and athletic performance? Then we have autonomous vehicles, Florida is one of four states where they are currently legal and home to CUTR and the Autonomous Vehicle Institute at USF, but having a space with no participation does nothing for our future.  

Saying we try isn’t enough and opportunity is on the verge of passing us by. We have many of the necessary resources in our community to create something amazing. Something that plays to our regions strength and acts as a catalyst. To be successful, that has to happen sooner rather than later because the window of opportunity is now, not a decade away.

Joy Randels is the board chair for Technova Florida.