About Us - Connect & Propel Tampa Bay

Our Story

Mike Echevarria and Sherri Sutton dedicated many years to training in and working with Appreciative Inquiry. They are so dedicated to the work, they started a company to bring it into other companies! With AI, companies can see the positive impact they can have with their employees and in their communities using this whole-system change methodology.

As they continued to see the power of Appreciative Inquiry and witness the profound changes it had in business, communities, cities, industries, and states, Mike decided they must find a way to bring it to Tampa. Mike said a city as great as Tampa could teach other cities what happens when you intentionally bring the right people together for the right reasons.

They hired leading experts Dr. David Cooperrider, Dr. Lindsey Godwin, and Prudence Sullivan to lead this journey and to discover what happens when you highlight and build on the best of an AMAZING city with unlimited potential. They like to call it Community Innovation!

Michael Echevarria

Dr. David Cooperrider

Pru Sullivan

Sherri Sutton

Lindsey Godwin

Our Approach

We brought 50 leaders together from Tampa Bay to brainstorm and vision how to bring the best of Tampa forward and create a North Star for Tampa. This is not political, biased, ministerial, bureaucratic, racial, administrative, legislative, governmental, etc.
It is a conversation with all stakeholders represented, including our youth. This Steering Committee Group is leading the direction to bring eight hundred people together in a summit for a conversation about what is possible!
The summit will create work groups of individuals from all sectors who will work together to bring their hopes for Tampa’s future into fruition, and build the future we know we are capable of creating!

Our Process

This process does not focus on fixing problems, but instead focuses on the future and the path to collectively get there.

Dr. David Cooperrider is the world’s leading expert on whole system change. He has used this process with small and large systems using a framework called Appreciative Inquiry. Dr. Cooperrider uses a 4-D process – Discover, Dream, Design and Deliver – to identify the positive core of the whole system and bring the best of what is forward. His process identifies what is working and what the whole system is doing well in order to focus on the opportunities for the whole system to move forward together towards their desired future. This process does not focus on fixing problems, but instead focuses on the future and the path to collectively get there. It is a call for collective action and it creates working groups that plan and work to create results with the voices in the entire system.

Dr. Cooperrider successfully used this process in Cleveland to achieve great results over the last ten years, and will amplify all he has learned working with whole systems in Tampa. Dr. Cooperrider lives in this region for part of the year and is committed to helping us connect and propel our region starting with Tampa in 2019.

You can visit Dr. David Cooperrider’s website to learn more about his work and Appreciative Inquiry.