BOB BOYD

PRESIDENT & CEO, INDEPENDENT COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES OF FLORIDA (ICUF), TALLAHASSEE

ICUF is an association of private, nonprofit, four-year colleges and universities in Florida. It serves as a collective voice for 30 schools, 180,000 students and 37,000 employees and is a key proponent of Effective Access to Student Education (EASE) grants, which help offset the cost of tuition at those schools by $3,500. Boyd served as ICUF’s general counsel from 1995 to 2019 and in 2019, became president and CEO. He’s the first ICUF grad to hold that position. He was recently named chair of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

EDUCATION: Rollins College (BA), Florida State University College of Law (JD), Flagler College (Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters)

FIRST JOB: My first real job was at 15 years old on a land surveying crew in Tallahassee surveying new neighborhood developments and various plots of undeveloped land in the swamps of Tallahassee in the ’70s. It was a battle with snakes, alligators and wasps every day!

DREAM ALTERNATE CAREER: NBA Commissioner. Watch basketball all day and do a bit of collective bargaining and work on salary caps, etc. I’d love it!

SOMETHING SUPRISING: I’m a self-taught amateur painter (very amateur, but I started painting at a young age). I paint huge canvasses with acrylics, mostly modern landscapes with a bit of surrealism added in!