Angela Scroggins, 34

Regional Director, Escape Countdown

By Business Observer Staff
| 2:50 p.m. October 13, 2017
| 2 Free Articles Remaining!

Class of 2017

Six years in the U.S. Coast Guard taught Angela Scroggins to lead by example.

“Everything that I would like my [colleagues] to do, everything I would ask them to do, I needed to be able to do myself,” she says. “I needed to go out and prove myself by always being dedicated, motivated and ready to go. The same thing goes for my staff, today, at Escape Countdown.”

Escape Countdown is a company that owns and operates escape room entertainment venues in Fort Myers, Sarasota and Tampa. Escape rooms challenge a group of friends or coworkers to work together to solve a series of puzzles that will allow them to get out of a room they’ve all been locked into for a certain period of time. Scroggins says it’s popular with bachelor and bachelorette parties, corporate team-building outings and families and groups of friends celebrating birthdays and other special occasions.

Escape Countdown isn’t Scroggins’ first foray into the business of entertaining people. Her resume also includes a stint as a “mad scientist,” she says. After the Coast Guard, unsure of what she wanted to do, she connected with a friend who worked at Mad Science, a national chain of educational centers that provide science-based entertainment for kids and families. Scroggins was hired as warehouse manager at the company’s Pennington, N.J., location and then took a position at Mad Science of San Diego as operations coordinator, a role that allowed her to perform for children.

“My Mad Science name was ‘Asteroid Angela.’ It turned out to be a lot of fun. You go out there and blow stuff up, play with dry ice … the kids love it. It was a unique experience that I was able to build on.”

— Brian Hartz