Selby Gardens President and CEO Named to Florida 500 List

November 1, 2023 – Sarasota

Florida Trend Magazine has named president and CEO Jennifer Rominiecki to the Florida 500, a list of Florida’s most influential business leaders representing 500 candidates across major industries. The editors of Florida Trend selected the executives after conducting hundreds of interviews and months of research, culminating in a highly selective biographical guide to the leaders of Florida.

Since joining Selby Gardens in 2015, Rominiecki has been a visionary, bringing twenty years of experience at major New York City cultural institutions. After arriving, she repositioned the institution as The Living Museum®, enacting a new operating model that has yielded increases of 128% in membership and 135% in overall earned revenues. Rominiecki has also overseen the creation, fundraising, and Phase-One construction of a three-phase Master Site Plan for the Gardens’ Downtown Sarasota campus, for which more than $57 million has been raised.

By the end of 2023, with Rominiecki at the helm, Selby Gardens will complete construction of Phase One – including the world’s first net-positive botanical garden complex generating more energy than it consumes. Phase One of the Master Plan will feature:

•                     a new open-air Welcome Center (includes ticketing pavilion, welcome gallery, welcome theater) 

•                     a state-of-the-art Plant Research Center (includes a new herbarium, molecular laboratory, library, conference rooms, and administrative offices)

•                     the Living Energy Access Facility (LEAF), which houses parking, a garden-to-plate restaurant, a new gift shop, and a nearly 50,000 square-foot solar array that will make Selby Gardens the first net-positive energy botanical garden complex in the world

•                     a cutting-edge stormwater management system

•                     a publicly accessible multiuse recreational trail (MURT)

•                     off-site roadway improvements

•                     and numerous new garden features with more open space

In 2020, under Rominiecki’s leadership, Selby Gardens adopted Historic Spanish Point in the Osprey area of Sarasota County as a companion campus to its flagship Sarasota location. Together, Selby Gardens’ two campuses provide 45 acres of bayfront sanctuaries connecting people with air plants of the world, native nature, and regional history.

Rominiecki also serves as Chair for VISIT FLORIDA, the state’s official tourism marketing corporation, serving as Florida’s official source for travel planning to visitors across the globe.

Rominiecki stated, “It is an honor to be named to Florida Trend magazine’s Florida 500 list of business leaders as Selby Gardens celebrates its 50^th Anniversary. Selby Gardens is positioned to realize incredible potential – especially as Phase One of the Master Plan nears completion — while preserving our important history for the generations to come. We look forward to welcoming visitors from diverse communities across the United States and worldwide to join us as we embark on another 50 years of plant exploration, discovery, and celebration.”

The complete Florida 500 list can be found at https://floridatrend500.com.