La Gaceta Newspaper

By Tiffany Razzano

During his more than two decades working in financial services for companies like Washington Mutual and Chase, John Seib was always drawn to educating his clients.
The Portland, Oregon, resident spent much of his career working with large mortgage teams across the country. “One of the things that I always was kind of moved by or broken-hearted by were individuals, young couples, young families who would come in and didn’t qualify for a home and didn’t understand why,” he said. “So, I’d sit down with individuals and try to coach them, help them understand. They don’t know what a credit score is or why they can’t buy a house. They just didn’t understand financial literacy at its base.”
So, Seib was excited by the opportunity to shift gears in recent years and focus on financial literacy among children.
He was an early investor and founder of Tampa-based Electus Global Education Co. and today, serves as the company’s chief revenue officer.
It was his nephew who tapped him to get involved with the then start-up company about eight years ago. “He told me, ‘You might want to take a look at this,’” Seib said.
Not only did he invest in the company, but he joined the advisory board. It wasn’t long before he got more involved in sales for Electus. And about four years ago, he was tapped as the president before becoming CRO. “That’s when I made the decision to really leave the career I had been a part of,” he said.
The company’s early years focused on finding investors, as well as research and development. “All around the idea of financial literacy,” according to Seib. “Could there be a solution? If there was a solution, what would it look like?”
During this time, Electus began developing its Life Hub financial education technology.
Initially, the company thought it might focus on adults, maybe high school students. “But all the research pointed the other way; it pointed to our youth and really hitting those formative years,” Seib said.
He added, “There’s a big difference between behavior modification and behavior formation.”
Modification is “very, very difficult,” he noted. “Once patterns or beliefs are set, it’s difficult to modify behavior.”
They realized they’d have more of an impact if they focused on forming “behaviors from the beginning, so you don’t have to go back and modify later,” Seib said.
Life Hub focuses on providing experiential learning through an app for youth ages 7 to 18. It teaches the broader philosophy of financial literacy, as well as entrepreneurship, career development and life skills. “Yes, it’s financial literacy, but to really make change and impact, it has to be more,” he said. “The solution would have to go beyond that.”
Through the Life Hub app, kids are paid to complete educational tasks on the platform. “Kids get excited when they’re earning money,” according to Seib. We’re not asking them to wash windows or anything. But they complete these tasks, these lessons, and once they’re completed, then they get paid real money deposited on a Visa card.
Most of the tasks pay between $1 and $3 and take anywhere from 10 to 25 minutes to complete. The budget for each task is set by the organization, often a nonprofit, that is utilizing the technology for the children they serve.
The tasks are designed to get students thinking about real-life financial scenarios. For instance, in one task, they’re asked to “buy a puppy” by a virtual pet store. They need to consider how much it costs to buy their pet food, take it to the vet and buy any other necessities for it. “The impact is when you understand the difference between what you pay for something and what it costs,” he said. “It’s a life principle.”
These virtual tasks get children participating in the program to think about their spending and saving. “The first foundation of making a chance is understanding and learning about money,” Seib said. “The other skills follow once they understand earning. That’s when changes to habits and beliefs and patterns happen.”
Electus launched its Life Hub technology two years ago in Tampa through partnerships with the likes of Big Brothers Big Sisters Suncoast and a private school, Academy Prep. “We launched it in a very, very controlled environment,” he said. “It’s brand new technology and a brand new concept. We wanted to feel out what was possible.”
Now, the company is growing rapidly, expanding its partnerships. They’re getting ready to work with Lutheran Services Florida and Friends of the Children in the Tampa Bay area, and even nationally, working with Big Brothers Big Sisters in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Chicago, and Friends of the Children in the San Francisco area. “We’re continually expanding not only in Florida but across the country,” Seib said.
While it might be challenging to get the Life Hub technology into public schools, it’s “perfect” for other educational spaces. “The areas that we’re really excited about are micro schools and home schools and even private and charter schools,” he said.
Within the next few weeks, Electus will move into the direct-to-consumer market, offering the Life Hub platform to individual families.
There are more than 1,600 tasks available on Life Hub and customization is available for each school, organization and student using the technology.
While the “sweet spot” for the technology is those ages 7 to 18, Electus is also exploring working with children as young as 4 and moving into universities and colleges.
The technology can be beneficial for a wide range of youth, Seib added. “Schools don’t teach financial literacy of entrepreneurship or career development … I think that the key is that what we’re doing changes the trajectory and it breaks generational habits and patterns, and I think that we’re changing the generation that is coming up. It’s what really drives all of us every day.”

Roni-Kay Elser

Roni-Kay Elser was diagnosed with epilepsy when she was just six weeks old after experiencing a grand mal seizure that was sparked by a high fever. “I’ve known nothing else ever since,” she said.
The disorder runs in her family. “There’s a genetic line,” according to the West Palm Beach native. “My great grandmother, back in the day, had what they called ‘fits.’”
She didn’t let it stop her, though. He had two brother’s and her father was into sports, so she was an active youth who participated in gymnastics, figure skating, swimming and other activities. “I taught myself growing up with it and I could sense them coming on,” she said. “I’d get somebody or sit down. Ninety percent of the time, I had an aura and felt them coming on.”
In 1991, when Elser was in junior high school, her family moved to Polk County and she graduated from Bartow High School.
Since then, she’s enjoyed a varied career. Initially, she was interested in journalism. “I loved stories and wanted to get behind the scenes,” she said.
She’s worked in accounting, as well as environmental permitting and engraving.
But one of her early jobs was in the medical field. Because of her epilepsy, she was frequently at medical appointments. At one point, one of her doctors told her, “You can relate and you explain this better than I did to a patient and I didn’t have to question it,” she said. He hired her to do secretarial work in his office and she eventually became office manager.
After her divorce, Elser switched gears and began working for Hillsborough County Public Schools so she could be on the same daily schedule as her children. She was hired as a production coordinator for a school kitchen.
Today, she’s a student nutrition manager for two schools – Brandon High School and Wimauma Elementary School.
She’s also an activist in the epilepsy community. Even as a child, she was a poster child for the Epilepsy Foundation, speaking to reporters and at events to share her story, and attended a camp in the Everglades. “I always wanted to make people aware that we weren’t the only ones out there. There are other people out there,” she said.
By the time she was an adult, Elser was having eight to 10 seizures a day. The most she ever had in one day was 108. “It was so up and down,” she said. “I’d have months with them and a year without. There was such a fluctuation. And throughout my life, it was a rollercoaster of medication, trials and errors, and what have you.”
A pivotal moment came in January 2008. While driving on Interstate 75, she had a seizure behind the wheel. “Luckily, I got my friend’s attention or I wouldn’t be here today,” she said. “I said, ‘Enough’s enough. Something has to happen.’”
After some research, Elser learned that Tampa General Hospital was seeking qualified candidates for a new brain surgery. “It was high risk at the time,” she said.
Doctors concluded that all of her epilepsy activity was happening on the left side of her brain and gave her the green light for a temporal lobectomy on the left side of her brain. She was warned of some side effects, but she’s felt very few after the surgery and she hasn’t needed any medication since.
This success inspired her to found the Seize the Moment foundation. “I wanted to get the word out there,” Elser said.
The organization works closely with patients and educates the public about epilepsy and the various treatment options available to them. She and her team also assist with new patient consultations for TGH and she walks people through her experiences with surgery.
Seize the Moment also raises money to assist with medical expenses, such as copays, and also research and development in epilepsy. This is set up through a fund in collaboration with TGH and the University of South Florida physicians group.
For the last five years, Elser’s primary fundraisers have been sporting events – bowling outings and professional hockey, football, and baseball games – and a barbecue competition, Que for the Cure.
She launched the competition during the COVID-19 pandemic, and though she’s still building it up, she’s raised about $256,000 for the cause through all her events.
The next barbecue fundraiser, Que for the Cure, takes place Aug. 23 and 24 in Riverview. This year, 70 barbecue teams will compete in the event, which is also still seeking sponsors.
The event is inspired by her husband, a barbecue professional who owns a shop and makes and manufactures sauces and rubs. In fact, he’s even created two rubs and once sauce to sell as a fundraiser for Seize the Moment. They’re available at the upcoming barbecue competition.
Elser’s goal is to reach as many people as she can, whether it’s sponsoring patients or educating the community.
“(Epilepsy is) more common than you think. It’s more common than 90 percent of neurological disorders (like Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis) but people can recognize them more than epilepsy,” she said.
In fact, one in 100 people have epilepsy, she added. “That’s about 67 million people worldwide. I just want to help as many people as possible and help the doctors who are helping them.”

Saundra Weatehrs

As a high school student, Fort Lauderdale native Saundra Weathers decided on the car ride to tour Florida A&M University that she would study journalism. She wrote for her high school newspaper and had a natural interest in what was going on around her. “I don’t like to say nosy; I like to say curious. I was always very curious. I want to know more,” she said.
That’s how the Spectrum Bay News 9 reporter launched her news career. Admittedly, she wasn’t always a model student. “There’s a saying at FAMU; that it’s FAMU-ly and it truly is a family,” Weathers said. “I had some of my professors rein me in and say, ‘Listen girl, get it together.’”
Initially, she wanted to be an entertainment reporter. But after interviewing some celebrities, she realized she didn’t enjoy it. Then, thanks to one of her professors, she fell in love with hard news.
Weathers worked at FAMU’s radio station and an internship led to her being hired for an on-air television reporting job for WCTV, a CBS affiliate, during her junior year. “By that time there was no stopping me,” she said.
She stayed with the station for a few months after graduating before deciding it was time to move on. “If you know anything about living in a college town after you graduate, you feel so old,” she said. “It was time for me to go.”
“Before I graduated, I naively told my sister I was moving to Atlanta right out of college and getting a job in news,” Weathers said. “That was not true. So I was trying to figure out what was the most realistic path news wise and also near the water I love so much.”
She hoped one day to get to the Tampa Bay area, the largest market in Florida, but first she landed at WBBH, an NBC affiliate in Fort Myers. She worked there for two years covering four counties in Southwest Florida. “I knew I had to make a stop before” getting to Tampa, she said. But Tampa was “the No. 1 in the state. It’s where I wanted to be.”
Once her career hit the five-year mark, Weathers was hired by Spectrum Bay News 9 and she moved to Polk County. “It was very interesting. It’s great for news. You can’t even make it up the stuff that happens there. And there were great people in Polk County,” she said. “There wasn’t a lot to do, but workwise, it was fantastic.”
After about three years, she moved over to the media outlet’s main office in St. Petersburg to work the night shift. “That means covering everything from every single county,” she said. “Wherever the news happens, you go.”
She remained in that role until 2020, when she launched the Justice for All beat for Spectrum, focusing on issues of equity, inclusion and disparities in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis.
During the protests surrounding Floyd’s murder, Weathers and her boss at the time “had long, hard conversations about the coverage and being intentional,” she said. “After some back and forth, I got the green light. I said, ‘Listen, I want to do these stories and do them in a way that makes a difference.’”
Weathers has always been drawn to social justice stories, but with this current beat, they’re her sole focus.
To start, she made a list of potential story ideas. But it wasn’t long before the stories were coming to her and members of the community were suggesting topics to cover.
One of her early stories focused on the arrests of Black children in the local juvenile justice system and how many were sent to adult prisons compared to children of other races. “The difference was astronomical,” she said.
She also focused on stories about representation in various fields, such as Black male educators. “I looked at the numbers and was astounded,” Weathers said.
She focuses on the good news too, she added.
She’s also been amazed by the action that’s been taken in the community because of her reporting. In one story, she looked at the reading scores of Black students, which were set back even further because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She recalls Spectrum creating a graphic around these scores that was widely shared on social media. This was gratifying for Weathers as she read the posts that accompanied these shares. The data backed up what many followers already seemed to know anecdotally. “It was like, ‘We’ve been saying this; now there’s the proof,’” she said. “When you have that type of reporting and so much response, it leaves so much opportunity for resolution.”
After that story came out, a number of organizations and individuals created reading programs “to try to close the gap for African American students,” she said, adding that it was “a real catalyst for change and people making a difference.”
Weathers has also reported extensively on Black maternal health, a topic that is “near and dear” to her. After airing a special on the issue last year, she received tremendous feedback from viewers in both the Tampa and Orlando areas.
“After it aired, a woman reached out to me and said, ‘Listen, I lost a child during birth. I already have a nonprofit, but I want to do more. This special was the kick I needed to do more,’” Weathers said.
Months later, the woman called back to say she launched an ongoing series of town hall meetings with health care and nonprofit leaders to discuss how to lower infant and maternal mortality rates in the Black community. “It led to this huge conversation in the Tampa Bay area,” Weathers said.
This year, the University of South Florida is even hosting a series of talks and other events, as well as offering mothers various resources, from April 11-17 for Black Maternal Health Week. “It’s really amazing to see how this conversation is now spreading like wildfire,” she said.
She’s touched by the momentum that stemmed from her stories. “I embrace my humanity in my reporting. I never try to tell a story as a robot. There is always a human behind that and I try to let that come out in my reporting. I’m not biased; I’m human,” she said. “I hope people feel that when they see that, that when they reach out to me, they know that’s coming from a place of someone who wants to help. I do this 100 percent to help people.”

Holly Gregory

A native Midwesterner, Holly Gregory was born and raised in a small town. “A little bitty town in Illinois that is still exactly the same,” she said.
Her father, who grew up on a farm, was a corrections officer, and her mother, a teacher. “In fact, she was my fifth-grade teacher. That’s how small my town was,” the Bay News 9 evening anchor said. “Everybody knows everybody, and you’re probably related to about a third of them.”
As a child, Gregory didn’t show an early interest in journalism. Instead, she participated in Future Farmers of America. “I didn’t grow up thinking I was going to be a reporter,” she said.
Through the FFA, she became interested in farm reporting and “it evolved from there,” she said. “I’m a communicator and I was like, ‘I can do this. I like being on air.’ At the time, it was very much agriculture based.”
She studied radio and television at Butler University in Indianapolis before moving to New York City for her last two years of college. There, she attended Marymount Manhattan College. “I’d been in the Midwest my whole life and I had no idea what I was in store for,” she added.
Her professors all worked in the field with “great connections” and through one of them, Gregory was able to land an internship with journalist and television host Geraldo Rivera. His office was across the street from the CBS building, where he also filmed. “It was eye opening and interesting and crazy,” she said.
She spent so much time in the CBS building that whenever she had a free moment, she’d walk down to the CBS local news studios and introduce herself to the staff there. “I made some friends – you’d never be able to do that today,” she said. “I found some people to take me under their wing.”
Through these friendships at CBS, staff members helped her put together a professional-looking newscast reel in the studio. “I had this beginner TV tape that was the slickest thing you’ve ever seen in the No. 1 market,” Gregory said. “I’d sit at the desk doing what looks like what is a real report.”
She also worked part time at the New York Post as what was referred to one of “the copy kids.” This was before computers and email were prevalent in the office. “I would run hard copy around to the editors,” she said.
With her experience with the Post and Rivera and her slick demo tape, she applied to entry-level broadcast jobs all over the country, ultimately accepting her first full-time position at WGEM in Quincy, Illinois.
“New York was where I really got the news bug,” she said. “It made me realize this is what I want to do and also that I can’t start on camera in the No. 1 market.”
Gregory spent four years at WGEM before moving on to WHO TV, an NBC affiliate in Des Moines. “That was like reporter bootcamp,” she said. “Our news director, he didn’t pull any punches; you better get it right.”
There, she had the opportunity to cover the Iowa caucus, which is how she “got the bug” for covering politics.
Not a fan of divisive arguing, she quickly established a philosophy that was “a little different from other political reporters,” she said. “I’ve always been a general assignment reporter. I’ve always been more rounded and then I do politics. I’m more like your average person who does politics. My philosophy is to let them talk.”
Then, her husband’s company transferred him to Chicago for “a job he couldn’t turn down,” she said.
This was an opportunity for her to take the next step in her career, as well, but left her with some insecurities. “Am I able to make the job from Des Moines to the No. 3 market in the country?” she said.
For seven months, she knocked “on every door in” Chicago, Gregory said. “I’d talk to anyone who would give me the time of day to get my foot in the door.”
Then, on Christmas Eve, she received a call from a news director at CLTV – what she calls “the Bay News 9 of Chicago at the time.” The station had three staff members call out sick. “They told me, ‘We need somebody,’ and I said, ‘I’m your girl,’” she said.
She spent six years with the station, which eventually sistered with WGN-TV in that market.
“There’s no place like Chicago for covering news. It’s a trip,” Gregory said. “Until I came to Florida. That’s a whole different trip.”
In 2009, her husband was transferred to Tampa. During the family’s first three years in the area, she focused on raising their three young children.
But she missed journalism and knew she wanted to get back into it the field, taking a job as anchor/reporter with Bay News 9. “The rest has just been history here,” she said. “It was a fantastic move here, career wise.”
Since moving to Florida, she’s covered a range of stories that grabbed national attention – from the infamous Casey Anthony. Julie Schenecker and George Zimmerman trials to the Seminole Heights serial killer to the Republican National Convention to Hurricane Michael’s devastating hit to the Panhandle.
“You name any big story over the decade, and we’ve done it,” she said. “With Bay News 9, we go. If there’s a big story in the state, we’re going.”
Hurricane Michael is probably one of the more memorable stories she covered. “I was there for the duration – before, during and after,” Gregory added. “I’ve never done work like that since, as far as hurricane coverage. Calling it ‘unbelievable’ doesn’t do it justice. You just have to be there to see what it’s like. These were real stories and we got to talk to real people.”
She also covered Hurricane Ian’s recent battering of the Fort Myers area. “But after the fact,” she said. “It’s about getting these stories on TV and making people understand what happened.”
Over the past decade, as she’s covered the news, she’s seen firsthand how much the region has grown – “the population and the changing of how Tampa looks and home values,” she said. “When I first came here, everything had a foreclosure sign in front of it, it seemed like. The economics…have changed drastically since I first got here. Now it’s a bigger, more bustling, more developed city.”
Even with all these changes, she still loves her work and can’t imagine being a journalist anywhere else. “There’s still that openness, that certain something you can’t quite put your finger on about covering Florida news,” she said. “Everybody seems to be coming from everywhere else. It’s a melting pot within a melting pot and everyone has a story.”

Beth Garcia

By Tiffany Razzano
Published Feb. 16, 2024

Born in St. Petersburg, Beth Garcia moved with her parents, who both worked in the dental field, to Ocala when she was about seven years old. Her mother had family with property in the area, so they moved to be closer to them.
After graduating high school, she went on to attend Florida State University in Tallahassee. There, she was a marketing major and she worked part time in a real estate office while taking classes. It wasn’t long before she started working for a title company and eventually met the state manager for First American Title, moving up to work closely with him for about 12 years. She frequently traveled the state as part of her role with the company.
Garcia met her future husband while working for First American Title. After they married, the couple moved to Tampa – where her husband is from – in 1990. “My husband is a Tampa native. He’s been here his whole life,” she said. “His parents, grandparents, everybody lived here and worked here.”
When they relocated to Tampa, her husband left First American and bought a title agency in Englewood, which is in southern Sarasota and Charlotte counties. While he ran that company for a number of years, when the market got bad, Garcia took over its management and he went back to work for First American.
The commute from Tampa was difficult, about an hour and a half one way, she said. “But I had a good office manager. Going down there was an adventure and traffic isn’t getting any better.”
They closed down the business last year after Hurricane Ian pummeled Southwest Florida. “It was just not good down there,” she said.
Now, she works for a developer as a project manager on “a couple of historical projects,” she said. “I oversee product selection, like lighting and finishes.”
Garcia added, “I always had a background in design and decorating for other people. I put that to use now and it’s more fun than the title side of things.”
She’s also dedicated to the nonprofit group The Chiselers, which works to preserve, restore and advocate for the University of Tampa’s H.B. Plant Hall.
It was an easy decision to get involved with the organization; her father-in-law, husband and niece all attended the university. “I’ve had a long history with the university and the building and it’s just always been so incredible and impressive to me,” she said. “When I was asked to join The Chiselers, I jumped on that. I wanted to be involved in preserving that building. It’s one-of-a-kind.”
It “takes a lot of work,” Garcia noted. “Even when you have just a house, that’s hard to maintain, and this is a quarter-mile long historic building.”
Since joining the group in 2017, she’s worked her way through different departments, many associated with the organization’s infamous Chiselers Market.
This year’s market takes place on March 9, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thousands of new and gently used items, including plants, jewelry, kitchenware, books, art, furniture and more are available to purchase.
She’s helped in ust about every area of the market, including the furniture department and working in the warehouse to sort and price items. Garcia moved on to join the executive committee and currently serves as president.
She looks forward to this year’s market as it’s the group’s primary fundraising event and there’s a lot of work to complete at Plant Hall.
In addition to the market, there’s a special ticketed event, The Minaret Mixer, the night before, held this year on March 8, 6 to 8 p.m. Guests get a sneak peek at the items for sale the next day at the market and even have the opportunity to scoop them up early. There’s also an auction held that evening. Tickets to this event are $150.
“It gives you a preview of what’s for sale and even if you don’t buy that night, you have the lay of the land for Saturday morning or you can even snap something up that Friday night,” she said. “We have amazing finds at that market. I never go without bringing something home. I have a house full of Chiseler items.”
It’s not too late for those who have items to donate to the sale to contact the group and arrange for them to be dropped off at the Chiselers’ warehouse.
Sales from the market have raised as much as $170,000 in underwriting funds for the building, while the mixer usually brings in another $150,000. The two events usually raise anywhere from $250,000 to $300,000 each year.
“This is our major fundraiser,” Garcia said. “Right now, we have three projects in play over there.”
The Chiselers are matching $200,000 – the other $200,000 coming from the university – to install new “historically appropriate” composite decking on the west veranda that will be essentially maintenance free.
They also raised another $80,000 in matching funds to pay for an implementation plan. “Just to see what projects we want to do next and in what order,” she said.
The group has partnered with the state to pay for the replacement of the music room roof. Both the state and the Chiselers will spend $500,000 each on that project. “They’re replacing all the metal on top of the big dome on top of the music room. It’s very labor intensive work,” Garcia said.
The group has also partnered with Hillsborough County to fund the Hazel Ward Lounge. This project costs about $400,000 split evenly between the Chiselers and the county.
Next year the university will tackle “the big ticket items.” The balustrades, concrete decorative railing around both verandas, need to be replaced, according to Garcia. It will cost about $350,000 for each veranda.
The east veranda is also in need of roof repair and new terrazzo flooring, a $2.6 million project, she added. “So, we’re looking at about $3 million that we need to gear up for.”
In addition to the annual market and mixer, the Chiselers also host a walk each year that raises up to $70,000. But they’ll likely need to introduce a third, new fundraiser, most likely a gala in May during historic preservation month.
“That’s on the table right now but nothing is in stone at this point,” Garcia said. “There are definitely moving parts. We need to change it up and raise as much money as we possibly can.”