For former Florida CFO Alex Sink, lifetime achievement is about making the world a better place
Alex Sink's role models for inclusion have paid off. Former Florida CFO, Alex Sink, has been a trailblazer in banking, politics, startups, and community service. She believes her lifetime achievement is about making the world a better place. Her commitment to service can be traced back to her upbringing in North Carolina. She credits her role models for inclusion and building and growing the most diverse bank in Florida. Sink also nearly became governor in 2010, losing to Rick Scott in a close race. She is also the widow of Florida attorney and politician Bill McBride. Her daughter, a successful commercial litigation practice, is now a pediatric doctor in D.C.
Published : 4 weeks ago by Alexis Muellner in Business
Ask Alex Sink what recognition for lifetime achievement means to her, and she asks a question: “It's not about what I did, but what have I done for others?”
At 75, she can tick off several lifetimes of achievement as a trailblazer in banking, politics, startups and community service. Out of college, she taught in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where she first noticed multinational banks. “Blah, blah, blah,” she said.
“To me, lifetime achievement means, what have I accomplished that made our world or other people better?”
Her commitment to service can be seen in how her parents modeled their lives.
She grew up in Mount Airy, North Carolina, in her great-grandfather Chang Bunker’s farmhouse. Bunker was one-half of the original Siamese twins and was a world traveler who, in his day, wrote the Tampa Bay Times in 2010, “was more famous than kings, queens and presidents.”
In the growing season, her dad was up before daybreak. She and her sister had a bedroom up above the kitchen. “We could hear my mother get up before daybreak and prepare him a very hearty breakfast before he left the house and got on that tractor and drove up and down those fields, planting corn or tobacco,” she said.
“He was very hard working.” So was her mother, the classic farm wife helper and homemaker, she said.
“She was also a very accomplished music educator and musician,” Sink said. That meant constant volunteering – her dad was a Kiwanis president, and her mother led the home demonstration club and started a women’s choir. They were at the First Baptist Church every Sunday.
“When you live on the farm, you have a responsibility for the other farm workers,” she said. “That's a part of where I've always been and became a diversity champion.”
Her role models for inclusion paid off.
“There were things that people in the 50s and 60s didn't necessarily talk about, but [my mother] was best friends with many gay musicians,” she said. “Coming from the Siamese twins family, we were Asian.”
The former Florida CFO nearly became governor, losing in 2010 to Rick Scott in a race decided by 1%. In addition to a range of political pursuits, she spent 26 years as a banker, rising to the role of president of Florida operations at NationsBank, now Bank of America, at a time when there were few women business executives, let alone banking leaders.
She was the first woman to run a statewide bank in Florida.
She’s proud of that, but her most significant achievement there is thinking about everyone who worked on that team and what they're doing now. People like Steve Raney, CEO and chair at Raymond James Bank and Bank of America’s Tampa Market President Bill Goede and Market Executive Ann Shaler.
The power of diverse thought in business has been a constant. During her banking tenure, Hugh McColl, long-time NationsBank CEO gave out internal “Crystal Grenade” awards to celebrate results.
“They were highly coveted and I got it,” Sink said. “It was because he said that I had built and grown the most diverse bank in our system.”
Sink is also the widow of Florida attorney and politician Bill McBride, the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for governor of Florida in 2002. She met him after being called to Miami to run the NationsBank there.
Within a few months, a colleague, Don Buchanan, asked her to meet McBride, an outside counsel at Holland & Knight, and she said, meh. “Every lawyer in Miami wants my business. I don't have room for anymore.” Buchanan said, “You don't understand. This is the most eligible bachelor in Florida.”
They met for lunch. He called a few weeks later, saying he was coming to Miami.
“He said, ‘Let's do something, play tennis or whatever,” she said. “Our first date was a tennis date, and the rest is history.”
At this point in her career, she’s recognizing things close to home, especially her two adult children.
“It is a source of pride to say that my son is now a partner at Trenam Law and has a very successful commercial litigation practice,” she said. “My daughter is in D.C. as a pediatric ICU doctor working in the most challenging children's hospital environment imaginable.”
Among other notables, she currently serves as a co-chair of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition's Florida Advisory Committee and on the boards of The Dali Museum, Junior Achievement, United Way Suncoast, and Tampa Bay Wave.
“Sink’s story shows us that an individual can truly have the power to work within both government and business for the betterment of all parts of society,” The University of Florida said in a post commemorating her 2020 honors as the Bob Graham Center for Public Service’s 2020 Citizen of the Year.
Topics: Business Leaders