H C B A P R E S I D E N T’ S M E S S A G E G o r d o n H i l l- H i l l W a r d H e n d e r s o n
Farewell and thank you
it has been a pleasure and a privilege to serve as Bar president.
As Bar President this year, I have endeavored to combat the undeserved negative reputation our profession often has in society by highlighting the great work performed by some of our Association’ s legal heroes. For example, Stephen Todd won the statewide Tobias Simon Pro Bono Service Award for contributing well over 2,000 pro bono hours during his career. Stephen Koch left his legal career 15 years ago to serve as President and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Tampa Bay and was instrumental in expanding the agency’ s outreach to thousands more underprivileged kids in desperate need of an adult mentor. Jeanne Tate started the“ Lawyers With Heart” initiative that helped raise over $ 108,000 for Tampa Bay’ s 2017 Heart Walk. And Carol LoCicero and Bob Kline founded the Tampa branch of End 68 Hours of Hunger, which collects and delivers food each week to over 200 children who might not otherwise have anything to eat. I hope that you have been inspired by their exemplary work. I believe their service demonstrates that lawyers do more to give back to the community than any other profession.
As I close out my final article, I want to highlight one last legal hero— Lisa Esposito, winner of the 2018 Red McEwen Award. For the last several years, Lisa has led
Lisa Esposito receiving the Red McEwen Award.
the HCBA’ s Community Service Committee and has played a vital part in organizing the Committee’ s many service projects. Here is the story of just one of these outstanding projects.
Several years ago, Lisa was looking for a charity to serve. She found A Kid’ s Place of Tampa Bay, which
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