Mercedes Young, President & CEO, The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Tampa Bay

July 2026 — In an interview with Invest:, Mercedes Young, president of The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Tampa Bay, discussed the chamber’s efforts in supporting the region’s economy, including its upcoming business expo.

What recent changes have most impacted the chamber?

The changes have been entwined with the growth of Tampa Bay. We had some amazing projects like the One Water initiative. And after Hurricane Milton, we are working on Tropicana Field’s restoration. The budget for those projects is about $780 million. 

The chamber has pinpointed the percentage of local small businesses participating on those projects. With my slogan “get the contact for the contract,” we are now a part of the decision-making process for the growth of our community. We have created a couple of programs that not only support members, but also members giving back to the community. 

Last year, we had the Back-to-School Backpack program, done in collaboration with the Health Fair. We created it that way so parents can take their kids to get checkups and be healthy together. We partnered with a local college and community centers to provide insights and training during the fair.

This included training on how to reverse Type 2 diabetes and the mindset of the Hispanic community when it comes to STDs. We also carried out the Quit Smoking project with Tobacco Free America. Since we’ve had a 40% increase of high schoolers in Hillsborough County alone, we also brought mental health trainers to teach coping mechanisms to deal with the anxiety — from being in a new country with a new culture and a new language.

As part of the board of CareerSource, I am able to support the workforce through the chamber. The chamber has the employers, and CareerSource brings the employees in the community to those employers. We are able to supply staff for big chains like Key Food. When they came here, they called the chamber right away to help with marketing and hiring. We were able to connect different entities to make it work because that’s what a chamber does. 

Last year, we were able to triple our numbers of membership because we needed more people to serve in the community that has so much growth. 

In January 2025, we started the year with a golf tournament, supported by the City of Tampa, that was postponed the previous fall due to Hurricane Milton. Many of the golf courses in Tampa were severely damaged, and they’re not necessarily a priority when restoring a city. So after one of the golf courses belonging to the city was restored, we were able to host that tournament. We partnered with the No. 1 radio station in Tampa, as well as Orlando Health.

We then had speed networking events through partnerships with local organizations, from South Tampa Chamber, Prospera, Florida Blue, to Unidas Somos Mas Fuertes. We not only have new, diverse flows of businesses, but we can also get the contact for the contract. We held the first one in February, planning to invite around 40 people to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tampa. Over a hundred people came, and we gave away a membership for a chance to win a million dollars. The project manager who led the casino’s construction is a member of our board, making it an organic partnership.

We also had the 50th anniversary gala, which was supported by great partners. As a matter of fact, Philip Morris International just became a partner with the Hispanic Chamber. 

Our business expo is coming up in December. That’s where we report on what we do throughout the year for the community. All of the members get a table, and share more about their business and how they serve the community. 

How do you view the chamber’s role in the broader context of Tampa Bay economy?

The chamber is definitely crucial in the growth of any community. When there will be growth, people reach out to the chamber first in order to be part of our services and programs. For example, we offer a lot of services in the tourism sector because that’s a major income driver for the state of Florida. That said, I make it my business that the chamber is always at the table discussing and negotiating how we are going to grow.

I’m part of different local boards and we build great relationships with the city, the airports, and the county. We are also familiar with the financial projections they have for the community as well as the different supporting organizations. We are collaborating on a high school program that started recently, where we build five events based upon zip codes so the students can share their resumes with potential employers and the military. We are completely immersed in these services supporting the growth of the region.

How do you address the acute challenges that have emerged in 2025?

The immigration crackdown on Hispanics has been open and clear. In the state of Florida, especially areas like Tampa and Miami, the Hispanic population is large, making their businesses easy targets. We have lost companies, not because they were illegal, but because it was too emotionally taxing.

They could not go to work because they’d be picked up and receive an explanation 72 hours later. For example, when a whole team of 12 people work on a roof in a building, someone would come and pick everybody up. We have board members that have invested more than a million dollars to open manufacturing companies, give jobs, and provide services in the country, and they have been deported. It has been very hard to focus on what we are trying to create in the middle of this attack on the Hispanic community.

This year, we prepared 2,500 backpacks for our back-to-school initiative. We had only 643 people show up because others were scared. So, I held four other events where we actually went to schools and shared the backpacks to be distributed by the schools. We had to be very strategic through partnerships with Moffitt Cancer Center, Good Samaritan, churches, support groups, and others. We have invested in all of those initiatives with our partners, and they agreed we need to take care of our community.

What are your key priorities for the chamber in the next few years?

One of the new avenues I want to expand on is relationships with the ports. Most people in the chamber are from another country, and we are marginalized here. That doesn’t mean we cannot do business from port to port with goods from our country that we love and know very well. If we can give a presentation with all of the different companies and their services, it will be a directory for the projects we have at hand.