Francis Joseph has worked and volunteered with Soaring City since the inception of the Tampa Innovation Partnership. He is one of the co-founders of the Caribbean American National Development Organization (CANDO) and serves as the organization’s Executive Director. “CAN DO” is a 501(c)3 dedicated to raising the profile of the Caribbean community in the Tampa Bay area and their economic, political, and cultural contributions to this community.
Mr. Joseph has been a trailblazer in forging collaboration with many community and civic organizations to help bring programs and services to this unrecognized and underserved section of the community. These collaborative partners include Hillsborough County, UACDC, Soaring City, AMRoC, LT3, Positive Spin, Project Link, and the many Caribbean civic organizations in the area. He strives to bring the richness of the diversity of the Caribbean community to Uptown and Tampa Bay.
Mr. Joseph has been a member of the Board of Directors for the University Area Community Development Corporation for ten years. He is a member of the Community Engagement Committee for Soaring City. He also serves as one of the original members and is an ambassador for the Hillsborough County Diversity Advisory Council where he represents the Caribbean Community for Hillsborough County.
Mr. Joseph was born on the island of Trinidad and Tobago and migrated to the United States at the age of seventeen. He is married to Kay Joseph, an avid Soaring City volunteer, and they have a daughter. After residing in Tampa for the past thirty-six years he considers Tampa his home.
In his professional life, he is the IT Director for Bausch + Lomb (B+L) Florida Operations, responsible for the Tampa and Clearwater locations. He has been with B+L for 31 years and is a member of the Site’s Leadership Team. Some of his most significant accomplishments at B+L include the implementation of key critical applications which include Electronic Data Interchange, a site Material Resource Planning system, a PeopleSoft Enterprise Resource Planning system, the implementation of a shop-floor Manufacturing Execution System, and most recently a global product serialization system.
Mr. Joseph holds a BS degree in MIS from the University of South Florida. He also has his MBA and Project Management certification.