Join other CEOs and business leaders in Northwest Florida who are building great businesses for a greater purpose.
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It can be lonely at the top, but it doesn’t have to be.
We know leaders limit their potential when they lead from isolation. But, when surrounded by trusted advisors with a common goal and a biblical worldview, they can maximize performance and energize cultures. With faith as the foundation, this powerful group of peers meet in an exclusive, confidential forums to have their questions answered and their answers questioned.
Chairs
Business Forum Leaders in the Northwest Florida Area
RICKY HARPER
Ricky has been blessed with a diverse career in many roles and leadership positions. After a four-year stint in the…
RICKY HARPER
Ricky has been blessed with a diverse career in many roles and leadership positions. After a four-year stint in the US army, he began his career at GE Healthcare as an engineer working on MRI systems. A few years later Ricky began learning leadership when he accepted the role of lead engineer for the Jacksonville FL team. Fifteen years later Ricky moved into the role of Area Director for the South West Georgia territory of GE Healthcare. After three successful years in that role he was tasked with assuming leadership of GE Healthcare’s North Florida/South Georgia region. His territory, then the smallest in the southeast zone was realigned and overnight became the largest, stretching from St Augustine FL to Macon GA. In this role Ricky became six Sigma certified and studied lean methodology. In the next nine years his teams were recognized for financial and operational excellence by receiving GE’s coveted ‘Omega Society’ award four times. Ricky retired from GE in 2009 and began consulting in the Tallahassee area, where he had the opportunity to work with nearly half of the state’s government agencies on various projects, usually in management and leadership development. In 2011 he was given the opportunity to become the Director of Florida’s Division of Corporations where he worked for Florida’s Secretary of State. In that role Ricky was tasked with instilling a ‘private sector mentality’ at the division and finding solutions for a new trend in corporate crime known as Business Identity Theft. Florida business owners now benefit from the work he and his team accomplished in understanding and developing protocols to protect them from that little-understood but devastating crime. In 2013 Ricky stepped away from public sector work and formed Business Shield Inc. which provided more comprehensive identity theft solutions for Florida business owners. In addition to becoming an entrepreneur, Ricky returned to consulting and in 2016 he first heard about the C12 Group while attending a seminar on Christian life in the workplace. In 2017, After a time of prayer and reflection, he answered the call to become a full-time C12 chair serving the Florida Panhandle. Ricky is a believer in leading with a servant’s heart and has a passion for marketplace ministry. Ricky and his wife, Gail, live in Tallahassee, FL. They have two sons and one grandson. Both of his sons share their father’s love of God and all things mechanical. In his free time, Ricky builds and races sports cars in the Tire Rack Champcar series at tracks across the Southeast.JEFF CERNY
Jeff has over 40 years of professional work and 10 years as a graduate level professor with Florida Tech University….