Shirar O’Connor, President & CEO, Bradenton Area Economic Development Corporation

July 2026 — In an interview with Invest:, Shirar O’Connor, president & CEO of Bradenton Area EDC, discussed her return to the region, her priorities for business attraction and retention, and the role of collaboration in supporting companies. “We want companies that we can partner with to grow our community with and equally, work with them to grow their companies,” O’Connor said.

What attracted you to this opportunity, and what is your vision for this new chapter?

What attracted me to the position was that it was professionally and personally aligned. I will be working for my home turf, so to speak, and that is inspiring to me.

I have been doing this work for over 30 years. To be able to take everything I have learned and implement it to serve my home community feels great. I am excited about the opportunity, being back home and working in a profession I love for a region that I love is a dream come true. 

What will be your top strategic priorities during your first year leading the organization?

The focus will be on the core role we play within the broader Bradenton area and Manatee County business ecosystem, particularly business attraction and business retention and expansion.

For me, it is important to target companies that pay high-wages and add long-term value to the local economy. We want companies that we can grow our community with and we will work with them to ensure we have the business climate to help them grow their businesses. 

When I graduated from university and was living on the west coast of Florida, I looked for a job and could not find one that fit my aspirations. Back then, many people moved to Charlotte, Atlanta, or Washington, D.C. It is important to me to create jobs so our kids have the option to stay local. We don’t want to export our young people and our talent. We need to have jobs that allow them to remain in the community and thrive.

What makes the Bradenton area uniquely positioned as a place to invest, work, and live?

There are a wide range of assets we have, particularly in aerospace and defense. I also see significant opportunities in financial services, and we have a diverse business community that will enable us to develop additional industry clusters.

For instance, in Bradenton, we have IMG Academy, which gives us an opportunity to look beyond sports and into sports performance, sports rehabilitation, and sports training. There are unique assets in the community that we can capitalize on and build from.

The area is also very connected from an infrastructure standpoint. We have the port, rail, highways, and airports. Our tourism industry has helped create strong airport infrastructure, and we can leverage that for business-to-business outreach. Connectivity is incredibly important, and we have those assets in Manatee County. We will definitely play to those strengths.

We also have the workforce and a growing community. In many parts of the United States, especially in the Northeast, populations are shrinking. In Manatee County and the Bradenton area, our population is growing, and that is a strong economic signal.

How do you plan to approach workforce development and talent attraction?

Workforce development and workforce attraction are top of mind. I need to meet with the universities and academic institutions in the area to fully understand where the skills gaps are, and where we may need to develop capacity or attract certain skills.

I have worked on programs in other jurisdictions called boomerang programs. One of the baseline outreach programs is to target our diaspora.Bringingpeople familiar with the area back is low-hanging fruit from a talent attraction perspective.

There may also be cases where we need to target very specific skill sets. With today’s digital tools, outreach is far more targeted than it used to be. I have seen programs that worked tremendously well. Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, offered moving expense stipends for people with specific skills to relocate to the city.. There are many ways to approach it, and once we understand the need, that will dictate the approach we take. 

We are well positioned to recruit specific skills, and some of it is already happening organically. There are opportunities that were once centered in the Northeast that have migrated here. One of my son’s friends is taking a job with an investment bank in the Tampa Bay area.. That didn’t happen 15 years ago. Back then, everyone went to one of the big financial centers. Our economy is evolving and there are a lot of opportunities we can capitalize on.

What challenges do you believe will most shape the area’s economic future?

Quality of life, or what we often call soft factors, have become much more important since the pandemic. People want to know they have great medical care available to them. They want flexibility, airports, and transportation systems in place.

When companies are looking at a location, the decision used to be heavily cost-driven. Cost is still a factor, of course, but other factors are weighted much more heavily in decision-making today.

It also comes down to the community itself and how easy it is to work within the systems of that community. That can mean anything from permitting to infrastructure needs, such as a new road. Speed to market is a big factor, and talent is a big factor.

Companies have to see themselves in a place for the long term. They want to know the community is aligned and working together. One of my jobs will be to bring in the right partners, make sure we are aligned, and help problem-solve for companies considering Bradenton and Manatee County.

Companies are looking for that kind of collaboration. They want communities where they can put down roots and operate effectively. They want less friction as they enter the market. That is one of the things the EDC does: we help facilitate that process and reduce friction for companies setting up operations in our community.

How do you plan to strengthen collaboration with local government, educational institutions, and business leaders?

It is an overused way of describing it, but economic development is definitely a team sport. It is about the team you have in place, and that includes hundreds of different organizations within the community.

I see our role at the EDC as being coalition builders and communication facilitators. We have to build relationships, understand everyone’s position, and make it work for the company. We are facilitators and conveners.

When a company comes in, we need to make sure we have everyone around the table. If it is a high-energy-use company, for example, we need Florida Power & Light involved. Companies need access to the different assets within the community.

You never know what a company’s drivers will be or what they want to leverage in the jurisdiction they are considering. When I worked for the state of Connecticut, we had a French pharmaceutical company looking at the state because it wanted access to two very specific researchers at Yale. Those researchers were doing work in an area the pharmaceutical company was interested in expanding, and proximity to them became the driver.

You have to figure out what is important to the company and then help facilitate those connections.

What does success look like for you in this role?

Success looks like recruiting companies that pay high wages, are innovative and that bring intellectual property to our community that does not currently exist here. I once worked with a Swedish aerospace company that brought in a new additive manufacturing process that did not exist in North America. Building those skills in the community was incredibly valuable, because it helped position that area as an epicenter in North America for that type of technology.

We want to attract companies that have global reach. I believe in supporting exports, because exports build GDP and real economic value for a community. Innovative companies and companies with global reach are important to that vision.

What kind of economic legacy would you like the EDC to help shape for the region?

This work has always felt good. Whenever we landed a project, I would bring my team to tour the facility afterward. Seeing people working and hearing how those jobs transformed lives is powerful.

The legacy is transforming people’s lives, lifting wages, and helping people thrive. There is dignity in having a job, especially a job that sustains your family.

That is why we do this work. If you talk to any economic developer, we believe in the mission.