Tampa nonprofit tech incubator CEO to step down

Lakshmi Shenoy, CEO of Tampa innovation hub Embarc Collective, announced she will be stepping down from her post effective Jan. 1, 2025.

Tampa Bay Lightning owner and local developer Jeff Vinik hired Shenoy to run Embarc in 2017 after meeting her on a tour of other tech innovation hubs around the country. At the time she was vice president of strategy and business development at 1871, a tech entrepreneurship hub in Chicago.

“My role in this journey was to be the builder – taking it from a vision to reality,” Shenoy wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing her departure. “It's time to turn over the reins to someone who knows how to 10x a vision. Tim R. Holcomb Ph.D. is the person to do this. His experience as an operator & educator makes him the perfect leader to help Embarc Collective continue to actualize our potential.”

Holcomb is currently professor and chair of the Department of Entrepreneurship and director of the John W. Altman Institute for Entrepreneurship at Miami University in Ohio. In addition to other leadership positions, Holcomb co-founded and grew Telcom Global Solutions, a $30 million design-build-services firm which was acquired by Flex, a Fortune 500 firm, in 2001.   

Shenoy will remain engaged at Embarc Collective as a member of the Embarc Collective board and as an Embarc Collective coach to member startups. She will also work alongside her husband, Ryan Jacobs, as he continues to scale his company SpotMyPhotos, an instantaneous photo sharing platform and member of Embarc Collective.    

Since launching out of a 32,000 square-foot building that previously housed a paper mill, Embarc Collective has served over 230 early-stage startups, delivering over 6,000 coaching hours and creating nearly 1,000 net new jobs. Of its original member companies from 2019, 96% were still operating in 2024. Member companies have collectively raised over $200 million with 7 successful exits.