It’s time again to recognize Winter Park Magazine’s Most Influential People. The program, in its milestone 10th year, recognizes those who— sometimes quietly—make a difference through their professions, their volunteerism, their philanthropy, their talents or their community engagement.
In our Summer Issue, we presented our 10 All-Time Influentials to mark the anniversary of this special feature. Now, on the following pages, please meet the Class of 2025—which is every bit as deep and impressive as previous classes. The inductees come from all walks of life but share a love for Winter Park— and a desire to keep it as special as the founding visionaries intended.
Nick Abrahams
President and CEO, Winter Park Health Foundation
THE WELLBEING WARRIOR
If Winter Park exudes a healthy glow to accompany its charming ambiance, chances are we can thank the Winter Park Health Foundation. WPHF, a private nonprofit, has been around since 1994, investing more than $131 million in projects and organizations dedicated to innovative (and often life-changing) initiatives within its service area—which encompasses Maitland and Eatonville as well as Winter Park. Patty Maddox, the organization’s first (and up to now only) executive director, retired in 2024 having overseen—alongside partner organization AdventHealth Winter Park—completion of the state-of-the-art, 80,000-square-foot Center for Health & Wellbeing, which opened its doors in 2019. WPHF’s new president and CEO, Nicholas Abrahams, joined the organization from the Orlando Economic Partnership, where he served in various leadership roles—most recently as senior vice president of partnerships and regional investment. “I already knew about the good work the foundation was doing,” says Abrahams, who earned an undergraduate degree from FSU and a master’s degree in nonprofit management from UCF. “This was a rare community service opportunity and I raised my hand.” WPHF can trace its roots to 1951, when the grassroots Winter Park Memorial Hospital Association raised funds to build and operate what would decades later become AdventHealth Winter Park. When the original association divested itself from hospital ownership management and became a private foundation, it opened the Peggy & Philip B. Crosby Wellness Center and the Elinor & T. William Miller Jr. Center for Older Adult Services. It later began funding community health programs—from fighting chronic health conditions to installing nurses and counselors in more than a dozen public schools—through grants and partnerships. WPHF made a huge splash with the $42 million Center for Health & Wellbeing, which has become a lively hub for care of the mind, the body and the spirit. Abrahams says he wants to build on WPHF’s successes and to find more opportunities to connect the center with the larger community. One way is a new program, “Impact: Open Doors,” which invites qualified nonprofits to use event or meeting space in the facility free of charge. An energetic community volunteer, Abrahams—who, with is wife, Courtney, has one daughter—serves on several civic and philanthropic boards. “I focus on building strong, collaborative teams and partnerships that drive meaningful progress,” he says. “I firmly believe that we are stronger and more impactful when we work together.”
Christi Ashby
Editor & Publisher, Orange Appeal
THE MAGAZINE MOTIVATOR
After she graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, Christie Ashby jumped right into what was, in those halcyon pre-internet days, the burgeoning world of print media as editor and publisher of a group of enthusiast magazines owned by a company called Patch Publishing in Titusville. The titles focused narrowly on such avocations as photography. She then spent relatively brief stints at Sunshine Artist, a magazine about the art-show business, and Orlando Magazine, a monthly that sought to be everything to everyone, before landing as editor and publisher at Orlando Home & Leisure, a more focused shelter-oriented publication owned by Gross Communications, whose other major media property was Winter Park-based smooth-jazz radio station WLOQ-FM. There she directed the magazine’s coverage of fashion, parenting, home and design, and the activities of local and regional charitable organizations. But, she says, the company usually seemed more interested in monetizing the magazine’s overage of nonprofits than in partnering with them. “I always wanted to have a magazine,” says Ashby, who recalls reading Seventeen as a youngster, absorbing every word and image before tearing out pages and saving those that she found most intriguing. “I always thought that if I ever did have my own magazine, then supporting nonprofits would be our mission.” By 2007, the resident of Maitland had decided to take the plunge and launch her own title that targeted civically involved women. By the summer of 2008—assisted by her high-school daughter, Kate—Ashby had debuted the first issue of Orange Appeal. She also immersed herself in community activities, chairing Shepherd’s Hope and the AdventHealth Cancer Institute Foundation and supporting Seniors First, One Purse and the Boys & Girls Club of Central Florida, among others. She also launched events, including the Orlando Women’s Conference, which brought together community and business leaders for a one-day program with the goal of offering networking opportunities and nurturing women leaders. This September, the event—held at Steinmetz Hall at Dr. Phillips Center—marked its 15th anniversary and drew about 500 attendees. Today, Orange Appeal is still a mom-and-pop—er, make that mom-and-daughter—enterprise. Daughter Kate, now Kate Lentz, also studied journalism at Gainesville and is assistant editor and publisher. Ashby and her husband of 42 years, Rob, also have an adult son and four grandchildren, Ashby was previously named a “Woman of Influence” by the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce.
Emily Bourmas-Fry
Executive Director & CEO, Crealdé School of Art
THE ARTS EGALITARIAN
“Art Is for Everyone” remains the motto at Crealdé School of Art as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. “This is a creative hub that inspires personal growth and personal connection,” says CEO and Executive Director Emily Bourmas-Fry, who came to the nonprofit school in 2024 after serving as director of development and director of marketing at the Orlando Museum of Art. She began her tenure as Peter Schreyer entered the final months of his 30-year stint leading the organization. During Schreyer’s tenure, the school’s annual budget increased from $275,000 to $1.5 million and its programs grew from serving several hundred to more than 4,000 students annually. Bourmas-Fry—who earned a master’s degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Adelaide, Australia—is ready to take this local cultural treasure to the next level while maintaining its down-home charm and its egalitarian artistic attitude. “Crealdé is a place for freeing yourself without feeling intimidated,” she says. “After all, everybody is an artist.” Bourmas-Fry, in fact, plays the cello and—bolstered by a class at Crealdé—has revisited painting. There are more than 125 classes from which to choose, for adults and children, that include ceramics, fiber art and jewelry making as well as drawing, painting, photography, sculpture and more. In addition to the main east side campus, Crealdé, under Bourmas-Fry’s leadership, operates the Hannibal Square Heritage Center, located on the historically African American west side of Winter Park. That facility, which opened in 2007, was founded by a partnership involving the school, west side residents and the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency. “As a Greek Australian who grew up surrounded by creativity and culture, I believe deeply in the power of art to connect us,” adds Bourmas-Fry, whose husband, Loren Fry, is a voice actor. “Just as meaningful is the example I set for my twin daughters—raising them with a love for art, empathy and justice reminds me why this work matters.” It also honors the legacy of William “Bill” Jenkins, the founder, who was by profession a developer who studied art and wanted to create a place where artists—and would-be artists—could learn from their instructors and from one another in a welcoming environment. Check out Crealdé at 50: Where Creativity Builds Community, an exhibition of work from past and present faculty members, which will open October 24 at the main campus’s Showalter Hughes Community Gallery.
Tim Bradstreet & Michael Buffa
Founders, Forward/Slash
THE KINDRED SPIRITS
When Tim Bradstreet and Michael Buffa first met, it was over a shared enthusiasm for whiskey—a spirited bond that would eventually evolve into one of the region’s most unique beverage ventures. Bradstreet, a self-described “spirits nerd” and a former corporate hospitality beverage director, brought a precision-minded palate and industry knowledge to the table. Buffa, a versatile entrepreneur who founded the Orlando Whiskey Society (a group of local whiskey enthusiasts) and Buffa Bittering Company, brought a creative boldness needed to push boundaries. In 2023, they opened Forward/Slash—a boutique blending house and distillery located in the former Holler Chevrolet parts department building on Capen Avenue. “Our whole brand exists because of collaboration,” says Buffa. Indeed, that philosophy is infused into every batch. Step inside the blending room and you’re transported into a kind of modern alchemist’s lab lined with beakers, pipettes and tasting notes for future releases. It’s here that the two excitedly describe their latest experiments, channeling the creative energy of mad scientists with a slightly more refined sense of purpose. Rather than distilling everything in-house, Forward/Slash, which employs about a dozen people, partners with small, independent distillers across North America—sourcing and blending unique barrels to craft spirits that are greater than the sum of their parts. The lineup ranges from meticulously layered bourbons to bold innovations like Sin Nombre, a tequila/mezcal blend that defies category and expectation. It’s no wonder that they’ve already won awards (their first blend, “Patience” won Gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2025 in the category of American Whiskey) and earned a cult-like following. But for all the praise their blends have garnered, Bradstreet and Buffa are most proud of what they’ve poured (literally) back into the community. Forward/Slash, in just two short years, has hosted a variety of events—many of them fundraisers—at The Bar at Forward/Slash with such other local purveyors as Simply Cheese and The Good Pour. Earlier this year, they partnered with the Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival Foundation on a limited-release bottling that sold out and raised almost $2,000 for the arts organization. Through July, in fact, the company had collaborated with 26 local charities to host pop-ups that raised money for worthy causes. “We like making a positive impact in our own backyard,” says Buffa, a graduate of Winter Park High School, Georgia Tech and the Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College. (Bradstreet graduated from the FSU School of Hospitality). Forward/Slash is a testament to what happens when good spirits—and good people—blend well and do good.
Dorrell Briscoe
Dean of Religious & Spiritual Life, Rollins College
THE ORDAINED ACTIVIST
Dorrell Briscoe laughs when asked if his 2020 book, There’s A Storm Comin’, is about him. It’s not: The subtitle is How the American Church Can Lead Through Times of Racial Crisis. But the title is telling. Briscoe, a native of Carbondale, Illinois, has taken Rollins College by storm since he became dean of religious and spiritual life a year ago. During his first two months—and despite the national political climate—he helped win twin grants for programs that further the college’s still-steadfast commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB). His message—“We see you, we hear you, we are here to understand”—has drawn scores of students to his office in search of counsel during troubled times. Briscoe is a pastor, yes, but also an author, professor, powerlifter, speaker, civil-rights historian and, not infrequently, an online DJ whose professional life has deftly straddled the secular and sacred worlds. Degrees in political science (University of North Florida) and public administration (Texas A&M) led him to work in urban planning and neighborhood revitalization with the City of Baton Rouge and the State of Texas. “I thought I was going to run for office,” says Briscoe. “Then life throws a curveball and suddenly you’re in the ministry.” Not one for half measures, at Southpoint Community Church in Jacksonville he established a Young Professionals group that drew more than 250 civically active participants. In Durham, North Carolina, he was founder and lead pastor of The Six:Eight Church, where he focused on building a diverse, cross-cultural congregation. (Micah 6:8 is the Bible verse that calls on people to “act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.”) With degrees in theology (Liberty University) and ministry (Duke University), Briscoe says that his faith bolsters his social justice activism, whether it’s supporting marginalized youth, advocating for environmental justice or bridging divides between institutions and the people that they serve. Says Briscoe: “In Winter Park, I hope to be more than a dean or a scholar. I want to be a neighbor, a collaborator and sometimes a provocateur—asking the questions that unsettle us until we find better answers together. And I’ll do it with a mix of grit and grace because that’s what love requires.” Briscoe is now in the final year of a Ph.D. program in American history from the University Leicester (UK). He is working an a dissertation about the impact of President Harry S Truman’s 1947 Committee on Civil Rights. He and his wife, Tracy, are the parents of two boys and two girls.
Jennifer Deery
Executive Director and CEO, Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Garden
THE POLASEK PROMOTER
Some kids dream of running away and joining the circus. Jennifer Deery was enchanted by the notion of absconding to an art museum, which happened to be the plot of a book that she cherished in childhood. E.L. Konigsburg’s 1968 classic, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, describes two pre-teen siblings who secretly live in the shadows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Today Deery is living the dream—an adult version sans hiding—and spends every day in a museum as executive director and CEO of the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens. A former member of the museum’s board of directors, Deery is a born enthusiast who relishes her multifaceted role at the Polasek. On any given day she may have to deal with budgets, landscaping, event planning, community outreach and much more. Deery’s passion for art runs deeper than marveling at masterpieces on walls or in glass cases. “I appreciate the process of art as much as the end result,” she says. It’s a fascination stoked by growing up in a home resembling a gallery. “Kids even teased me,” says Deery. “Most homes had family pictures on the walls—we had paintings.” More inspiration, of course, was provided by From the Mixed-Up Files, which was read to her by her parents. “That book hooked me on art,” recalls Deery, who has a long history of involvement in civic organizations related to arts, education and leadership. She was a kindergartner when the family traveled from Poughkeepsie, New York, to visit the real Metropolitan Museum—an experience that she describes as “jaw-dropping.” Deery soon advanced from admiring art to creating it. “I was one of those kids who was constantly drawing at restaurants,” she says. “If there was a paper place mat, I was drawing on it.” After graduating from Auburn University with a degree in fine arts, Deery held several jobs in the corporate world that incorporated her lifelong passion, including art director at SunTrust (now Truist) and graphic artist for both BellSouth Telecommunications and Sea World. Her assuming the top post at the Polasek feels like the application of a bold brush stroke on her portrait. Deery—who has three adult children with her husband, Jeff, an attorney—says her formula for success includes a mixture of “positive energy, enthusiasm and a desire for excellence.” She adds: “I truly enjoy people, so learning and incorporating what each individual has to offer makes my leadership effective. Also, I only like to ask of others what I’m also willing to give.”
Michelle del Valle
Assistant City Manager,City of Winter Park
THE STRATEGY STEWARD
As the heir apparent to long-time City Manager Randy Knight, who’ll retire in early 2027, Assistant City Manager Michelle del Valle has served stints overseeing nearly every city department—including (but not limited to) building and permitting, fire and rescue, planning and transportation and even the police department. She also often runs point on schemes hatched by the Florida Legislature, which has continued to chip away at the powers of local officials who are responsible for delivering essential services to their constituents. That’s a lot of responsibility in any city but especially in Winter Park, an acknowledged jewel of a place that has 30,000 (highly opinionated) residents, nearly 600 employees, a $233 million annual budget and a relentless tension between development and preservation interests. But del Valle, who describes herself as a “strategist who loves people,” has toiled in the trenches of local government for decades and loves it. Back in the day, she was a business administration student at UCF and worked at Casa Lupita, a Mexican restaurant in Casselberry, where she struck up friendships with a group of regulars who were employees of the parks department at the City of Maitland. That, in turn, led to her first city job as a counselor at a summer camp, then to an internship in the city’s Human Resources Department. Now into the nitty-gritty of governance, she developed an interest in budgeting and accepted a job in accounts payable after graduation. “The job market was terrible and I couldn’t afford to get a master’s degree right away,” recalls del Valle. But her bosses noted her acumen and work ethic. “By the time I was 26 I was a budget manager,” says del Valle. “I was just curious and, in government, if you follow where people are spending the money you understand what’s going on.” In 2008, she joined the City of Winter Park as assistant city manager and earned a master’s degree in public administration a year later from UCF. Del Valle, the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce Champion of the Year in 2017, has plenty of quantifiable goals for the city—like growing its reserves and completing the undergrounding of its power lines—but is most interested in the city continuing to be “a warm, welcoming and vibrant community focused on extraordinary care for its citizens, businesses and the natural environment that we are so lucky to have.” She adds: “I’m most excited to achieve my ultimate career goal of becoming Winter Park’s next city manager, when the opportunity arises.”
Warren Lindsey
Attorney, Lindsey, Ferry & Park P.A.; Winter Park City Commissioner
THE TAXPAYER’S ADVOCATE
Criminal defense lawyer Warren Lindsey, a partner in the Maitland-based firm Lindsey, Ferry & Park P.A., has represented a number of high-profile clients (sometimes judges or other lawyers) over his more than 40-year career. In March, though, he was hired to represent 30,000 citizens of Winter Park—perhaps his most notable clients yet—but for a very different kind of job as city commissioner for Seat 4. Lindsey, for years a staple on every imaginable list of “top lawyers,” drew no opposition when he filed to replace Todd Weaver, who had opted to not seek reelection. The civically active past president of the Orange County Bar Association and the Seminole County Legal Aid Society is, of course, the soul of discretion when it comes to his courtroom activities. But when it comes to city business, Lindsey is among the most outspoken advocates on the dais for access and transparency. He has cheered even his critics—including the parade of young people who lambasted elected officials over the dislocation of funky Austin’s Coffee—for exercising their right to free speech. And he was a vocal opponent of a new ordinance that limits how people can gather and demonstrate at the Winter Park Library & Events Center. (The ordinance passed on a 3 to 2 vote.) “I usually only do my talking in court,” says Lindsey “This is definitely a different experience.” Before his election, Lindsey served on the city’s Planning & Zoning Board, where he was instrumental in striking a first-of-its-kind deal: an agreement by Rollins College to pay a portion of the property taxes for a new faculty housing project that would otherwise be tax-exempt. He is also willing to reconsider his stances—a quaint notion these days. For example, at one of his first commission meetings he opposed the idea of spending city dollars on sidewalks that extended into Maitland. But then he realized that, while the sidewalks were outside the city limits, they provided a safer walking route to an elementary school for students who live in Winter Park. Ultimately, he supported the project. Notes Lindsey: “You can’t be afraid to confront differing opinions, and also you have to be open to changing your mind if someone is persuasive.” Lindsey, a graduate of the University of Florida School of Law, has three adult children with his wife of 42 years, Eileen Forrester, who is an assistant public defender in the Ninth Judicial District. He adds: “My goal is to keep, preserve and enhance Winter Park as the desirable place it is to live, work and raise families. Many of our citizens could have chosen to live anywhere, but chose our city because of its arts, culture, charm and welcoming atmosphere.”
Anil Menon
Dean, Crummer Graduate School of Business, Rollins College
THE EXECUTIVE INNOVATOR
From Bombay, India, where he was born, Anil Menon devoured novels by Louis L’Amour and Zane Gray about the American West. He became entranced with frontier lore about cowboys and cattle drives across vast expanses where, as the song describes, coyotes howl and the wind blows free. He listened to Tennessee Ernie Ford, Merle Haggard, Hank Snow and Hank Williams—“not the stuff they call country music today,” he notes—and knew that someday he would live in the United States and explore for himself the “Streets of Laredo” immortalized in the traditional cowboy ballad. When Menon left Bombay in 1981—for Texas, of course—a family friend assured his father that the teenager would eventually return home. “You don’t get it,” replied the elder Menon. “My son has just gone home.” Once in the Lone Star State, Menon earned a Ph.D. in marketing strategy and statistics from Texas A&M. His dissertation was funded by (and conducted at) the Strategic Planning Council, a think tank in Cambridge, Massachusetts, established by G.E. and Harvard Business School. He taught graduate-level marketing at Texas Tech and Emory University—where he received numerous teaching and research awards—and was selected as a Sony Fellow in Business Innovation at the Sony Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo. Menon’s subsequent business career included global senior leadership roles at IBM and Cisco, where he was involved in the early stages of artificial intelligence—beginning with eBusiness at IBM and later with the Internet of Things (IoT) at Cisco. He was also managing director and a member of the managing board at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, and served The Prince of Wales—now King Charles III—as a senior adviser on sustainable markets. Prior to joining Rollins, Menon was executive vice president at Sharecare, a digital health information company based in Atlanta. Clearly, the dynamic dean did not come to this small (but prestigious) graduate school simply to preserve the status quo. Working closely with faculty and staff, he helped double MBA enrollment and strengthen the school’s reputation for innovation. And speaking of innovation, Menon is spearheading a new institute for executive education—a flagship project separate from Crummer—that will extend the college’s global reach and influence. An avid collector of Edison cylinder phonographs and 19th-century Baluchi carpets, Menon and his wife, Daya, a surgeon by training, have two daughters: Ambika, a surgeon, and Anjali, a 10th grader.
Frank Santos
President and CEO, Rosen Resorts & Hotels
THE ALTRUISTIC INNKEEPER
If you watch The Bear, the Emmy-winning
series about life behind the scenes of a Chicago sandwich shop, you know there are few workplaces more madly collaborative than a restaurant kitchen. So it tells you all you need to know about Frank Santos that his first job at age 14 was as a busser at a Holiday Inn—and he never really left. “My entire career has been in a hotel,” he says. Not the same hotel, of course, nor the same job. Santos, now president and CEO of Rosen Hotels & Resorts, moved up following the death last year of the legendary Harris Rosen. The top job capped a professional journey that began in a hotel kitchen in Fall River, Massachusetts, and evolved into an office job as regional controller for Hilton Hotels Orlando/Kissimmee. There, in 1986, Santos caught the attention of Rosen, who recruited him to be CFO of what was then known as Tamar Inns. “We connected immediately,” says Santos of Rosen, who would become not only a mega-successful hotelier but a community benefactor whose good works made headlines. As CEO, Santos has huge shoes to fill as he oversees a company that boasts seven hotels, more than 4,000 employees and the indelible legacy of an iconic owner whose name is the brand. But if anyone can do it, then it’s surely the man who worked side-by-side with Rosen for 39 years (“I still get a little emotional about it,” he says of his friend and mentor’s passing) and who played a pivotal role in growing the company and spearheading initiatives that remain associated with Rosen. These include RosenCare (a healthcare program for employees of the hotels) and generous preschool and college scholarship programs for residents of underserved Parramore and Tangelo Park. He also worked with Rosen to create the UCF Rosen School of Hospitality Management and twice pitched in to stave off closure of the Rosen Aquatic & Fitness Center. These achievements and others earned Santos numerous accolades, including the first-ever CFO of the Year (Large Company) award from the Orlando Business Journal in 2009. In 2023, Santos’s own voluminous civic resumé—which includes board service for major local and regional arts organizations—was recognized with the Kenneth K. Murrah, Esq. Award as Central Florida’s Outstanding Philanthropist. “That’s Frank,” says Brian Bentley, superintendent of Diman Regional Vocational Technical School, where a young Santos studied culinary arts. Bentley remembers his former student as “a poor kid from Fall River who’s never forgotten his roots.” Since graduating from Diman in 1972, Santos has been a generous donor to his alma mater. In 2008 he was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame, joining a guy who grew up in the same Fall River neighborhood: Emeril Lagasse.
Carina Sexton
Executive Director,
Park Avenue District
THE AVENUE ADVOCATE
If there’s a perfect pedigree to oversee the Park Avenue District, it might well belong to Winter Park native Carina Sexton, who grew up in a family with deep roots in the city’s retail and dining scene. Her dad, Don Sexton, was senior vice president of stores for Ivey’s, the big-box department store that once anchored the Winter Park Mall, before he and her mother, Lettie Sexton, opened Downeast Orvis on the avenue in 1990. Carina, who later served as the company’s buyer, had already begun working on the avenue at Pappagallo—a women’s clothing and shoe shop—when she was just 15. “We carried Pappagallo shoes and the Bermuda bags with interchangeable covers,” recalls Sexton. “It was so much fun working there.” Now, she’s executive director of the Park Avenue District, a tightly focused nonprofit established in 2019 to preserve the avenue’s character and history, encourage its vitality and support its merchants. Her goal is to foster an environment that allows existing operations to flourish while welcoming intriguing newcomers that can add to the district’s picture-postcard panache. One of Sexton’s committees works with landlords and business brokers to scout unique shops across the country so that when a storefront becomes available, there’s a better chance that an independent rather than a chain will take over the space. Some kinds of chains, though, do have their place. “It’s fairly mixed right now and feels like a pretty good balance,” notes Sexton, a graduate of Mars Hill College in Asheville, North Carolina, whose personal civic involvement ranges from museums to programs for foster children. “When Park Avenue is thriving, the entire community benefits.” Sexton, who also raised her three college-aged children in Winter Park, has been instrumental in establishing “Plated on Park,” an annual dining event with a decked-out communal table for 200 that stretches down the avenue. Everyone wears shades of white and cream, and feasts on a menu created exclusively for the evening by local chefs. The district has also amped-up its holiday game with a carousel and a cathedral of lights in Central Park that will return again this year. “I believe God created each of us with unique gifts,” adds Sexton. “And I give Him credit for mine—the ability to listen, organize and bring people together. When we lean into the roles we were created for, we can accomplish something great together. So I’m especially grateful to the businesses and property owners whose investment, partnership and pride have made all of this progress possible.”