Susan Skelton, Tallahassee
Administrator, Triumph Gulf Coast
Three times, Susan Skelton had a hand in the reapportionment of Senate districts in Florida. The first time was in 1980 when she was a legislative research assistant for the Senate Committee on Reapportionment, which was chaired by the powerful Sen. Dempsey Barron of Panama City.
She recalls working with state representatives Carrie Meek and Arnett Girardeau to, at Barron’s behest, bring about single-member voting districts that would guarantee Black representation.
“This was before there were computers,” Skelton said. “We drew maps by hand and colored in districts with Magic Markers. You had to open the windows to let the fumes out.”
Forty-three years later, Skelton remains a public servant as the administrator of Triumph Gulf Coast, the organization created by the Legislature to disburse damages paid by BP due to the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.
Skelton has always been around consequential people. As a high schooler, she worked in the office of Dexter Douglass, who would become one of the lead lawyers for Vice President Al Gore during the tumultuous presidential election recount of 2000.
After graduating from Florida State in 1979 with a degree in political science, she went to work in Washington for U.S. Sen. Richard Stone. When Stone was “unelected,” as Skelton put it, she returned to Florida and worked on a Barron re-election campaign and became his legislative assistant for the final five years of his legislative career.
People including Douglass were disappointed that Skelton never went to law school. Frankly, she didn’t feel the need.
“Why on earth would I go to law school when I had a job in Dempsey Barron’s office?” she said. “I received a full education from him on the legal and legislative process.”
She worked for Pat Thomas and Gwen Margolis when they were Senate presidents. Three times, she declined when House Speaker Alan Bense asked her to serve as the executive director of the Florida Taxation and Budget Reform Commission. Finally, the “big boss,” Senate President John McKay, told her to do the job, and she did.
Skelton retired in 2012 with no plans to return to work, that is until Bense came calling in October 2015 and again put the arm on her. She agreed to take the Triumph job with little hesitation.
Eight years later, she enjoys what she is doing and finds it gratifying to make grant awards.
“It might be for a fuel tank at the airport in Apalachicola to make sure that the community can respond to emergencies,” Skelton said. “Or career-oriented programs that lead to good jobs right here in our area or the law enforcement training track we built in Walton County so that road deputies can feel safe under all conditions.”
The woman who once opened the window to let marker fumes out now reviews proposals for artificial intelligence instruction in public schools. She is helping to lead the region into a future marked by a greatly diversified economy.
“I was blessed to have a lot of teachers in leadership positions,” she said. “Not many people get that opportunity.”
Margolis, the first female Senate president in the state’s history, was especially helpful to Skelton as someone who demonstrated the value of being tough and not backing down.
“When Margolis was elected Senate president, there had been a war between her and Sen. W.D. Childers, who was really gunning for the presidency,” Skelton said. After the dust settled, Sen. Girardeau, who owned property in Haiti and had witnessed political violence there, was in the Senate president’s office looking out the window.
“I asked him if he was OK,” Skelton recalled. “He said, ‘Yes, I am just relishing the fact that there aren’t tanks outside and the military is not here trying to take over the building. We are having a calm transfer of power.’
“I have thought about that many, many, many times in the past few years.”
Susan Skelton was nominated for the 2024 Pinnacle Awards by Becca Hardin, President and CEO, Bay Economic Development Alliance.
Videography by The Workmans
