Representatives from USF Health and Tampa Bay Wave received the 2024 Tampa Downtown Partnership’s Urban Excellence Award for placing first in the Private Sector Project Award category. Pictured (left to right): Joanne Sullivan, USF Health assistant vice president of Community Engagement; Santo Cannone, Tampa Bay Wave Board of Directors chair; Jennifer Ptack, Tampa Bay Wave manager of Strategic Branding and Events; Haru Okuda, MD, FACEP, FSSH, USF Health Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation executive director; Dee Garcia, Tampa Bay Wave director of Development and Strategic Partnerships; Colleen Reiner, CAMLS director of Education and Research Administration; Robert Brown, Tampa Bay Wave board of directors.
The Tampa Bay Wave-USF Health/CAMLS Health Tech|X Accelerator program earned top honors
at the 2024 Tampa Downtown Partnership’s Urban Excellence Awards ceremony held Feb.
21, placing first in the Private Sector Project Award category.
The annual Urban Excellence Awards celebrates businesses, organizations, individuals, events and projects that have
made significant contributions toward creating a unique, vibrant and diverse downtown
Tampa environment. The awards include nine categories to capture the range of efforts
contributing to revitalizing the downtown area.
The Tampa Bay Wave-USF Health/CAMLS HealthTech|X Accelerator program is a collaboration between the USF and Tampa Bay Wave, a non-profit accelerator
for high-growth startups. It is a mentorship-driven program run over a fixed period,
and are designed to provide Tampa-based startups with essential resources that help
entrepreneurs make rapid progress on business, product, and customer development.
A central feature of the program is the use of USF Health CAMLS for in-person programming, signature events, and company pitches.
Charles J. Lockwood, MD, MHCM, executive vice president of USF Health and dean of the Morsani College of Medicine (left), with Joanne Sullivan, USF Health assistant vice president of Community Engagement (center), and Dee Garcia, director of Development and Strategic Partnerships for Tampa Bay Wave, at the 2024 Tampa Downtown Partnership’s Urban Excellence Awards ceremony Feb. 21.