Featured Stories – Sharon Line Clary
SHARON LINE CLARY, A CHAMPION FOR ORLANDO
By George Diaz
As a marketing major at Florida State University in the mid-1990s, Sharon Line Clary quickly established a career perspective that has served her well.
"Throw me into something, I'll figure it out."
Since then, Line Clary has been thrown into the mix of a lot of things, and has been quite proficient at figuring most of them out.
The trajectory has been impressive: Her days working with the late football coach Bobby Bowden in the athletic department, helping to recruit athletes, as well as roles in the marketing and sports information office, set the foundation for her current role at AdventHealth, where Line Clary is Senior Vice President of Community Impact and Partnership Engagement.
She remains heavily involved in sports, and for the last two years has served as chairman of the Greater Orlando Sports Commission (GO Sports) Executive Committee. Her scope of knowledge, influence and connections makes her the perfect fit for the organization.
"The first thing that comes to mind is her time serving in the community, which dates back to the early 1990s," said Jason Siegel, President & CEO of GO Sports. "She has a long history of serving the community in a number of different roles. That’s a lot of ‘course’ knowledge; she knows all the right distances and where all the bunkers are hiding. With that, Sharon has a wealth of information and tremendous relationships she's made along the way.”
Call it a case of a hometown girl made good.
Line Clary's roots run deep, etched at the Mission Inn Resort & Club in Howey-in-the-Hills. Her grandfather Nick Beucher purchased the property back in the early 60’s. Beucher and his wife, their six children and all of the grandchildren (including Sharon) had shared ownership of the resort. It is there she fostered a love for sports, swinging a golf club or a tennis racquet since she was a child.
After receiving her master’s in marketing and communication technologies and a few job stints in Tallahassee, she eventually found her way back home by working with Orlando's successful World Cup soccer bid in 1994.
Two years later, she was back in the soccer mix, this time as a member of the organizing committee that hosted preliminary-round matches for the 1996 Summer Olympics. It was during that time that she connected with the hospital/health industry, putting sponsorship packages together.
That would eventually lead her to AdventHealth, where she has worked for the last 28 years. She oversees marketing and nonprofit partnerships, sports and entertainment and other business partnerships, communications, community relations and community investment, and philanthropy for the nationally ranked health care system which encompasses 18 hospitals, 29 emergency rooms, 44 urgent care centers, and hundreds of physician practices and outpatient services.
That's a lot of people and a lot of connections, which plays perfectly into her community-connected skill set.
"I really love finding, solving something big," she said. "I love finding the big opportunity. Sponsorship used to be about signs and eyeballs and maybe a promotion and some PA announcements. It's so much more than that. And so I love digging deeper with a partner and really trying to figure out how we solve something bigger."
She is on the front lines advocating and spreading the good word about the AdventHealth Training Center, a state-of-the-art medical hub in downtown Orlando providing innovative training and medical services for professional athletes, including the Orlando Magic, as well as the local community.
"I love the big vision around the training center and the deeper research that we're doing to extend the lifetime of the athlete on the court and on the field, and then translate those learnings to the broader community, " she said.
“So for the woman going through breast cancer, what can we learn from the athlete to help her recover faster, and to get back to her life faster?"
It's that deeper knowledge that she has brought to board meetings and strategic planning for GO Sports. A perfect example: The U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in February, which involved a bit of negotiating between organizing groups and athletes because of issues with the starting time and the heat.
"Because of her role at AdventHealth and extensive work in sports, there is so much overlap with everything we need to put on events, including access to a lot of great experts," Siegel said. "A perfect example is those conversations about the heat during the Olympic Marathon Trials. She was able to be a sounding board in finding people who could give good feedback so we could make informed decisions."
Line Clary is equally appreciative of the teamwork with GO Sports.
"I work with just about everybody in the sports community on both sides," she said. "So that's really nice to bring that perspective and maybe a bit of expertise to the table. Every chair or every board member brings different skills. And so it's finding what you can do that can help that organization grow."
It's been a great run, as she ends her second year as chairman.
Earlier this year, Orlando was named the nation’s Best Sports Business City for attracting and hosting events by the highly respected Sports Business Journal. "We heard from so many people that Orlando is so unique," she said. "The venues, the leadership and the people. Everyone's here to help our town be its best. And that is very rare. That does not happen across all towns.”
So spread the word: Sharon Line Clary is the perfect person to call on when you need help “reading the greens”.
