Management Team

Barbara Gershman

Managing Director

Barbara Gershman began her career as a print journalist and bureau manager, and later published a nationally circulated newsletter. In the last 15 years, she served the State of Florida as a grantwriter, grant maker, grant manager and document editor. Her grantwriting has succeeded in bringing millions of dollars into the budgets of several organizations. She has a bachelor's degree in Journalism and a master's degree in Adult and Community Education.

Ms. Gershman wrote two online courses for Dynamic Works Institute, the largest inservice and certification system for workforce development professionals in the nation. The courses are "Writing Winning Grant Proposals" and "Better Requests for Proposals for Better Projects." As a grantmaker, she has facilitated scoring of grant proposals and understands from this first-hand experience how grant reviewers judge proposals.

More than one thousand representatives of school districts and community organizations have received 12 hours of grantwriting training from Ms. Gershman. In evaluations compiled from the first 20 sites, 90 percent of participants said the workshop exceeded their expectations. Of these, more than two-thirds rated the workshop as "outstanding."

Ms. Gershman trained and assisted program directors with the Florida Department of Education, Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation and Governor's Volunteer Florida Foundation in writing Requests for Proposals. She has also created and delivered training in "Improving Your Writing" and team building.

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Rick Gershman

Creative Director

Rick Gershman's writing and editing experience runs the gamut from years as a news, sports and features reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, Florida's largest newspaper, to public relations, advertising, blogging, podcasting and resume writing.

Mr. Gershman wrote and edited more than 3,000 articles for the Times, one of the nation's most honored newspapers, and its sister publication tbt*. For the Times, he also wrote the Ill Literate blog, honored by the NYU Journalism School in 2006 as a highlight of one of the "best blogging newspapers in the U.S." He also has written for the Associated Press and freelanced for several media organizations.

In addition to his journalistic experience, Mr. Gershman has provided writing and editing solutions for several companies. He worked as web recruiter for the Tampa Bureau of the Acsys, Inc. professional staffing firm, rewriting resumes and cover letters and crafting Internet job postings focused on attracting top-quality candidates.

Mr. Gershman also worked as Communications Manager for The Spring of Tampa Bay, Florida's largest domestic violence shelter, creating newsletters, marketing documents, website content and other materials. He also has provided extensive volunteer work for The Spring, LifeSouth Community Blood Centers and other service organizations.

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