Monroe County’s search for a president/CEO for the Keys’ multimillion-dollar tourism agency is down to four people, who are scheduled to arrive in Key West for in-person interviews July 25-26.
“The president/CEO provides the vision and leadership required to sustain the Florida Keys & Key West as Florida’s premier travel destination and the county’s economic welfare,” the new job description reads on the website of SearchWide Global, the recruiting firm the county hired for the search.
The Monroe County Tourist Development Council’s volunteer board operates independently of the county commission and is funded by a 4-cent tax on every dollar spent in Keys hotels, vacation rentals and other overnight lodging establishments.
Having narrowed the field, a county-appointed committee is handling the interviews, which will include:
- Joseph Boschulte, commissioner of the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Tourism.
- Laura Chmielewski, vice president, marketing and communications at Team San Jose/Visit San Jose.
- Kara Franker, CEO in Estes Park, Colorado.
- Nerissa Okiye, director of tourism for Martin County, Florida.
The hiring committee includes Roman Gastesi, the county administrator who took a retirement break and is set to return to the job this fall, and Jodi Weinhofer, president of the Lodging Association of the Florida Keys and Key West.
The newly reconfigured president/CEO position will pay a salary between $210,000 and $250,000.
Committee members made short work of narrowing the field of candidates. SearchWide Global received a total of 24 applicants after advertising the job to those with destination marketing organization, or DMO, experience. In other words, the position isn’t made for someone to get on-the-job training.
Many applicants impressed the recruiters, but the committee tossed them without going further once they saw they hadn’t run a DMO.
SearchWide chose 14 people for the search committee to review. None were Keys residents, although one owns a home in Key West. That’s Jim Werner, a self-employed strategic consultant, who lives half of the year in Key West, and the rest in Philadelphia. He was formerly the chief tourism officer for Philadelphia.
This job search comes three months after the TDC board unanimously fired veteran Keys marketing leader Stacey Mitchell, after a series of audits from the county clerk ripped the agency for failing to maintain financial protocols.
For several years, Mitchell was charged with leading the TDC’s marketing strategy, staff and overseeing all the financials.
Gastesi has said it wasn’t fair, in retrospect, to leave one person at the top to carry the entire workload.
The TDC needs at least a CEO and a chief financial officer, which the agency has never had before, Gastesi has said.
Weinhofer has also stuck up for Mitchell’s work.
“We promoted somebody who was your marketing director right to a position of CEO,” Weinhofer said. “We took something that was $11 or $15 million, grew it to $60 million, and didn’t increase the staff, and didn’t give them what they needed to make it work.”
Mitchell, whose attorney told Keys Weekly she plans to sue for wrongful termination, was promoted to director of marketing when the Keys were grappling with recovery from Hurricane Irma in 2017. Then came COVID-19.
The pandemic’s shutdowns left Florida as one of the only destinations for tourists, sending an unprecedented number of visitors to the island chain for fiscal years 2020-21 and 2021-22 and generating a $25 million revenue surplus for the TDC.
The TDC uses bed tax revenues to advertise the Florida Keys and its five individual regions, to promote events that bring people to town and to fund large capital, or construction, projects that enhance tourism.
