2025 Women in Leadership & Philanthropy
Fall Symposium
Presenting Sponsor: Florida Blue
Premier Sponsor: Northern Trust
Wednesday, October 8
8 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Tampa Marriott Water Street
Featured Speaker
Geena Davis
Academy Award-winner Geena Davis is one of Hollywood’s most respected actors, appearing in several roles that became cultural landmarks. Davis received her first Academy Award, for Best Supporting Actress, for her role as the offbeat dog trainer Muriel Pritchett in Lawrence Kasdan’s The Accidental Tourist. She was again nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her performance in Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise, in which she co-starred with Susan Sarandon.
In 2019, Davis was honored with a second Oscar, this time the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in recognition of the work she has done over the decades to achieve gender parity onscreen in film and television. Davis broke ground in her portrayal of the first female president of the United States in ABC’s hit show Commander in Chief — earning the 2006 Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama.
Davis made her feature film debut starring opposite Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie and went on to star in such films as The Fly, Beetlejuice, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Stuart Little and A League of Their Own.
Few have achieved such remarkable success in as many different fields as Davis; she is not only an Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning actor, but a world-class athlete (at one time the nation’s 13th-ranked archer), a member of the genius society Mensa and the author of a new memoir, Dying of Politeness, published by HarperOne.
She is recognized for her tireless advocacy of women and girls nearly as much as for her acting accomplishments. She is the founder and chair of the nonprofit Geena Davis Institute, which engages film and television creators to dramatically increase the percentage of female characters, and reduce gender stereotyping, in media made for children 11 and under.
Davis is an executive producer on the Gracie Award-winning feature film This Changes Everything and the Emmy-nominated and People’s Choice- and Gracie Award-winning television show Mission Unstoppable on CBS.
Davis holds honorary degrees from Boston University, Bates College and New England College.
2025 Honorees
Mindy Murphy - Community Leadership Award
Since 2012, Mindy Murphy has served as president and CEO of The Spring of Tampa Bay, the state-certified domestic violence shelter serving Hillsborough County. A former chair of the Hillsborough County Domestic Violence Task Force, she serves on the county’s domestic violence and child abuse fatality review teams, and the county Behavioral Health Task Force.
Mindy has been heavily involved in grassroots efforts and proposed legislation to improve the statewide response to domestic violence. She and her team contract with the state to oversee legal programs housed at 30 certified domestic violence centers.
She works with numerous organizations to improve the welfare of women and children, including serving on the boards of the Tampa/Hillsborough Homeless Initiative and the Nonprofit Leadership Center; on the Hillsborough County Commission on the Status of Women; as an advisory board member at the James and Jennifer Harrell Center for the Study of Family Violence at USF; and as a member of USF Women in Leadership & Philanthropy, the Athena Society and the International Women’s Forum.
Since moving to Tampa in 1990, Mindy has served on the boards of Helping Hand Day Nursery, Child Abuse Council, Cornerstone Kids, The Learning Centers, Hillsborough Kids Inc. and Trinity School for Children. She is a past president of the Junior League of Tampa and led events for ZooTampa at Lowry Park and Moffitt Cancer Center. A University of Virgina graduate, she was a founding member of UVA’s national Young Alumni Council and co-chaired five class reunions.
Mindy received the Florida Commission on the Status of Women’s Florida Achievement Award in 2015. In 2019, the Upper Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce named her Northwest Hillsborough Citizen of the Year and in 2023, she was a finalist for the Tampa Bay Business & Wealth BusinessWoman of the Year. She won a Telly Awards Silver Winner for her interview on Tampa Bay Arts and Education Network’s “Connecting with Kim.”
Mindy has presented at meetings of the National Commission on the Status of Women, the Florida Commission on the Status of Women, and Legal Services Corporation, the federal agency that funds and monitors free civil legal aid. She has been interviewed over 100 times by news outlets on issues affecting survivors of domestic violence and their children.
Mindy enjoys spending time with friends and family, and if she weren't at The Spring, her other dream job would be camp director at Camp Lake Hubert for Girls in Minnesota.
Adelaide "Alex" Sink - Lifetime Achievement Award
The second Democratic woman ever elected to a Florida statewide office, Adelaide "Alex" Sink served as Florida’s Chief Financial Officer from 2007 to 2011. She led the Department of Financial Services, overseeing the state's fiscal health and managing over $74 billion in annual tax revenue.
Alex entered politics after a 26-year career at Bank of America, where she was president of Florida operations from 1993 to 2000, leading the state’s largest bank with $40 billion in deposits and more than 9,000 employees in over 800 branches.
She has served as a delegate to several Democratic National Conventions, and in 2010, she came within 60,000 votes of becoming Florida’s first female governor in one of the closest races in election history.
In 2008, she founded Ruth’s List Florida, which has helped elect over 250 Democratic women, raised more than $8.5 million for endorsed candidates and trained more than 2,500 women to run for office.
Sink has been a board chair of United Way Suncoast, Leadership Florida, Take Stock in Children, Hillsborough Education Foundation, The Nature Conservancy (Florida Chapter) and Tampa Bay Wave. She now serves on the boards of United Way Suncoast, Junior Achievement of Tampa Bay and the Dali Museum, and is co-chair of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s Florida Advisory Committee.
Alex was a 2024 Hillsborough County Women's Hall of Fame inductee and 2020 Girl Scouts Hall of Fame inductee. She received the 2024 Tampa Bay Business Journal BusinessWoman of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award, 2020 Florida Citizen of the Year from the Bob Graham Center for Public Policy at the University of Florida, the Tampa Bay Lightning Community Hero Award in 2018, the H.L. Culbreath Jr. Profile in Leadership Award in 2017, and the Junior Achievement Tampa Bay Hall of Fame Laureate Award in 2013.
Born in North Carolina, Alex holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Wake Forest University, where she is a life trustee. Her father was a farmer and her mother a homemaker, musician and choir director. Both served as community leaders in nonprofit and civic groups. Her maternal great-grandfather was Chang Bunker, one of the famous conjoined "Siamese Twins" Chang and Eng Bunker.
Alex’s late husband, Bill McBride, was a well-known lawyer, business leader, decorated Marine and Democratic Florida gubernatorial nominee. Their two children are Bert, who practices law at Trenam Law, and Lexi, a pediatric critical care fellow in Washington, D.C. Alex is a grandmother of four.
