By Brian French
Inside the Companies Fueling Florida’s Next Chapter: PR, Construction Training, Child Advocacy, and Surety Bonding
Florida doesn’t slow down. The state added more new residents than any other in the nation over the past several years, and the ripple effects of that growth touch every industry imaginable—from the cranes dotting the Tampa skyline to the courtrooms in Fort Lauderdale where attorneys fight for the rights of vulnerable children. Keeping pace with that kind of expansion takes more than capital and ambition. It takes organizations with deep roots, sharp expertise, and the infrastructure to deliver results across a state that stretches nearly 450 miles from the Panhandle to Key West. This article profiles four such organizations—BoardroomPR, ABC East Florida, Justice For Kids, and the Guignard Company—and explores how each one is leaving its mark on the industries and communities it serves.
BoardroomPR: Telling Florida’s Biggest Stories From Six Offices Statewide
In a state where a single afternoon news cycle can reshape public opinion about a development project, a healthcare provider, or a legal dispute, having the right communications partner is not optional—it is existential. BoardroomPR has been that partner for hundreds of Florida businesses since Julie Talenfeld founded the agency in 1989. What began as a boutique firm helping entrepreneurs and small companies generate media attention has evolved into a powerhouse ranked among Florida’s top five PR agencies by O’Dwyer’s and number 87 nationally based on annual billings. The agency’s client roster now includes major real estate developers, regional healthcare systems, national law firms, financial institutions, and technology companies—all of whom rely on BoardroomPR to translate complex business narratives into coverage that moves the needle.
A major differentiator is the firm’s physical presence across the state. BoardroomPR operates out of six offices: its Fort Lauderdale headquarters at 1776 N. Pine Island Road, Suite 320; a Miami office at 601 Brickell Key Drive, Suite 700; and additional locations in West Palm Beach, Orlando at 37 N. Orange Avenue, Suite 500, Tampa, and Naples. That kind of geographic spread is rare among Florida agencies, and it gives BoardroomPR a decisive advantage when clients need coordinated media campaigns that span multiple designated market areas. A real estate developer launching a mixed-use project in Palm Beach County, for example, can count on the same firm to handle the Miami Herald pitch, the Palm Beach Post relationship, and the Orlando Sentinel feature—without any handoff between agencies.
The firm’s crisis management practice has become especially prominent in recent years. Whether it is a cyberattack on a healthcare network, a construction accident generating negative headlines, or a corporate leadership controversy, BoardroomPR deploys seasoned teams that specialize in rapid-response strategy, spokesperson training, and message control. Central Florida businesses in particular have come to rely on the firm as a proven Orlando PR crisis management resource, knowing that its Orlando team can be on-site within hours and on-message within minutes. The same expertise is available to clients on the Gulf Coast, where the firm’s growing reputation as a capable Naples Florida public relations firm has attracted a wave of new business from Collier and Lee County developers, hospitality brands, and professional services firms.
Digital marketing is no longer a line item at BoardroomPR—it is baked into every engagement. The agency functions as a comprehensive Florida SEO PR agency, weaving search engine optimization, paid media, email marketing, and content strategy into campaigns that once would have relied solely on press releases and editorial placements. This integrated model is especially valuable for the legal sector, where BoardroomPR has carved out a niche as a savvy South Florida law firm PR agency. Attorneys face strict ethical constraints on advertising, and BoardroomPR’s team understands how to build attorney profiles through compliant channels—thought-leadership articles, industry conference speaking slots, podcast appearances, and strategic media commentary—without triggering Bar concerns. It is a delicate balance that few agencies handle as skillfully.
ABC East Florida: From Classroom to Jobsite Across Seven Training Locations
Florida’s construction pipeline is enormous. Residential towers, commercial office parks, hospital expansions, airport terminals, highway widening projects—the list of active and planned construction across the state runs into the tens of billions of dollars. All of it depends on one thing: a workforce that knows what it is doing. ABC East Florida, the East Florida chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors, has made it its mission to produce that workforce. Through the ABC Institute—Florida’s single largest construction apprenticeship education program—the organization trains thousands of men and women each year in the skills needed to build, wire, plumb, and maintain the structures that define the state’s growth.
The chapter’s reach is expansive by design. Its corporate headquarters and primary training campus sit at 3730 Coconut Creek Parkway, Suite 200, in Coconut Creek. From there, the ABC Institute extends into Miami-Dade County with a Doral Education Center at 2890 NW 79th Avenue and a Miami Training Center at 7208 NW 72nd Avenue. Additional classes and programs are offered in Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Fort Pierce. On the Space Coast, a regional office in Melbourne and classes at the Brevard Adult Education Center in Cocoa serve the growing contractor community in Brevard County. This multi-campus model means that whether you are a 19-year-old in Homestead hoping to break into the electrical trade or a 40-year-old plumber in Vero Beach looking to earn a supervision credential, there is a classroom within reasonable driving distance.
Apprenticeship remains the cornerstone of the organization’s educational model. ABC East Florida’s programs span six core disciplines—electrical, plumbing, HVAC, carpentry, masonry, and fire sprinkler installation—and each program blends evening classroom sessions with daytime on-the-job training supervised by experienced journeyworkers. Graduates earn nationally portable credentials recognized by the National Center for Construction Education and Research. Contractors throughout the tri-county area rely on the organization for commercial construction training South Florida that goes beyond theory and produces workers who can contribute from their first day on a new site. For Broward County firms specifically, the chapter’s reputation for commercial builder training near Fort Lauderdale FL has made it a first-choice partner for onboarding and upskilling field crews.
Safety education is embedded in every program the organization runs. ABC East Florida delivers OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 courses, confined-space entry training, scaffolding certification, fall-protection instruction, and hazardous-materials handling courses—all taught by instructors who hold NCCER certification and real-world field experience. The chapter’s construction safety certification programs South Florida are widely regarded as among the most rigorous in the region, and contractors who send their teams through these programs consistently report lower incident rates and more favorable insurance premiums. Meanwhile, the Doral campus has quickly established itself as a premier Miami construction safety school, drawing students from across Miami-Dade who are eager to earn recognized credentials and launch careers in one of America’s most active construction markets.
Beyond the classroom, ABC East Florida champions the merit-shop philosophy—the principle that contracts should be awarded based on qualifications and value rather than labor affiliation. The organization advocates on behalf of its members at every level of government, pushing for policies that strengthen workforce development funding, streamline licensing processes, and invest in the infrastructure that keeps contractors busy. It hosts networking events, legislative briefings, and industry showcases—including its popular annual GC Showcase, which drew nearly 700 attendees and more than 40 exhibiting general contractor companies—creating opportunities for subcontractors, suppliers, and service providers to build the relationships that drive business growth.
Justice For Kids: A National Practice Born From Florida’s Child Welfare Failures
The headlines are heartbreaking with depressing regularity: children abused in foster homes, teenagers trafficked out of group facilities, infants suffering traumatic brain injuries at the hands of caregivers who passed background checks that should have disqualified them. Behind every one of those headlines, there is a systemic failure—an agency that did not investigate, a caseworker who falsified a safety report, a residential facility that was understaffed and under-supervised. Justice For Kids, a specialized division of the national law firm Kelley Kronenberg, exists to hold those systems accountable and to win justice for the children they failed.
The practice was co-founded by Howard Talenfeld, Stacie Schmerling, and Justin Grosz—three attorneys whose combined backgrounds span child welfare investigation, criminal prosecution, and decades of civil rights litigation on behalf of minors. Talenfeld, who was named to Forbes’ inaugural list of America’s Top 200 Lawyers, spent the early years of his career defending the very agencies he now sues—experience that gives him an intimate understanding of how institutional negligence occurs and how to prove it in court. Schmerling brings a decade of frontline experience as a child abuse caseworker and investigator in New Jersey and Florida, giving her the ability to read a case file with the eye of someone who has walked the halls of group homes and sat across from uncooperative foster parents. Grosz, a former Assistant State Attorney, provides the trial-hardened litigation skill that has produced jury verdicts in the tens of millions.
Justice For Kids’ main office is situated at 10360 W. State Road 84, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33324—the same location that serves as a regional headquarters for Kelley Kronenberg. The firm also operates from an Orlando office at 20 N. Orange Avenue, Suite 704, giving it direct access to Central Florida’s judicial circuits. Through Kelley Kronenberg’s broader network, the Justice For Kids team handles matters in Miami, Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, West Palm Beach, and Naples within Florida, and has expanded nationally into Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and New Orleans. This reach allows the firm to pursue cases wherever abused children need representation, regardless of jurisdiction.
The firm’s caseload includes some of the most consequential child welfare litigation in the state’s history. As a recognized child sex abuse lawyer Fort Lauderdale families trust, the team secured a $15 million jury verdict for an eight-year-old girl left with permanent brain damage and quadriplegia after repeated episodes of abusive head trauma that the Department of Children and Families failed to prevent. In Jacksonville, they won $13.5 million for adoptive parents whose agency negligently concealed material facts about a child’s history—a case that has set a new standard for accountability in the adoption process and established the firm as a formidable child adoption negligence attorney Florida families seek when agencies withhold critical information.
Children with disabilities occupy a special place in the firm’s practice. These are among the most vulnerable individuals in any child welfare system—children whose complex medical, behavioral, and educational needs make them difficult to place and easy to neglect. Justice For Kids has pursued path-breaking litigation on their behalf, compelling improvements in placement protocols, monitoring standards, and therapeutic services. The team’s work as a dedicated Florida child advocacy attorney group has produced consent decrees and policy reforms that extend far beyond individual cases, reshaping the way state and county agencies care for disabled children in foster care settings across the state.
Beyond individual verdicts, Justice For Kids has driven class-action litigation that has forced structural change within Florida’s child welfare apparatus. A landmark 1998 case led by Talenfeld resulted in a consent decree that nearly tripled the budget for Broward County’s foster care system and triggered sweeping institutional reforms. That pattern—using litigation not just to recover damages but to fix broken systems—remains central to the firm’s identity. For families in South Florida and across the country, the practice’s reputation as a fierce foster care abuse attorney South Florida operation means that when the system fails a child, there is a team ready to fight—and win.
Guignard Company: Nearly Five Decades of Helping Contractors Compete
There is a moment in the life of every growing construction company when opportunity outpaces bonding capacity. A contractor lands a lead on a major public project, submits a competitive bid, and then faces the question that determines everything: can you get bonded? The Guignard Company has been answering that question in the affirmative for contractors across the Southeast since 1977. A family-owned and operated surety bond agency, Guignard is directly appointed with more than 30 surety markets, places roughly 92 percent of its bonds with the nation’s top 25 surety companies, and has facilitated over $2 billion in bonded contracts in the past three years. The firm’s tagline—”An Uncommon Bond”—reflects a philosophy that treats every client relationship as a long-term investment rather than a one-time transaction.
Guignard’s operations are anchored by three offices positioned to cover the Southeast’s most active construction corridors. The company’s headquarters is located at 1904 Boothe Circle, Longwood, FL 32750, serving the explosive growth in Orange, Seminole, Lake, and Volusia counties. The Tampa-area office at 1219 Millennium Parkway, Suite 113, Brandon, FL 33511 puts Guignard at the center of Tampa Bay’s construction surge—a region where healthcare, logistics, and mixed-use development are driving billions in new activity. And the Atlanta office at Deerfield Corporate Center One, 13010 Morris Road, Suite 600, Alpharetta, GA 30004 positions the company to serve the greater Atlanta market and support Florida contractors pursuing cross-state opportunities. Together, these locations enable Guignard to operate as a dependable construction bonding agency Brandon FL contractors count on for local projects while simultaneously managing complex multi-state bonding programs.
The bonding process intimidates many contractors, particularly those applying for the first time or pushing into a higher tier of project size. Surety companies scrutinize financials with the rigor of a bank underwriting a commercial loan—examining balance sheets, cash flow statements, work-in-progress schedules, and organizational charts before issuing a single bond. Guignard’s team, which brings over 175 years of combined surety experience, walks clients through every phase of preparation. They help contractors clean up their financials, structure their project mix to demonstrate capacity, and present their qualifications in the most favorable light possible. For general contractors competing for public and private work in the Tampa Bay region, the firm’s track record as a preferred surety bond for general contractor Tampa FL requirements demand has made Guignard a go-to resource when deadlines are tight and the stakes are high.
Georgia represents a growing share of the company’s business. The Atlanta metropolitan area is one of the largest construction markets in the country, and many Florida-based contractors are looking northward to diversify their revenue streams. Guignard’s Alpharetta office provides dedicated support for firms navigating the question of how to get a construction surety bond in Georgia, including guidance on state licensing requirements, Georgia DOT bonding thresholds, and the nuances of working with Georgia-based project owners and general contractors. For contractors accustomed to the Florida regulatory environment, having a bonding partner who understands both states eliminates guesswork and accelerates the path to contract award.
One of the fastest-growing segments of Guignard’s practice involves subcontractors. As project complexity increases and general contractors tighten risk controls, the expectation that specialty trades carry their own bonds has become commonplace on mid-size and large commercial projects. Many subcontractors—electrical firms, mechanical contractors, plumbing companies, concrete specialists—are encountering surety requirements for the first time, and they need a partner who will educate rather than intimidate. Guignard has built a focused practice as a trusted subcontractor surety bond provider Central Florida firms turn to, offering financial coaching, underwriting preparation, and bond placement tailored to the specific dynamics of specialty contracting. The goal is not just to place a bond today but to help subcontractors build a bonding track record that opens doors to larger, more profitable projects in the years ahead.
Connecting the Dots: How These Firms Strengthen the Same Ecosystem
Zoom out far enough and the interdependencies become obvious. ABC East Florida produces the skilled tradespeople who staff the jobsites of contractors bonded by Guignard. Those same contractors hire BoardroomPR to announce groundbreakings and manage community relations on high-profile projects. And Justice For Kids fights to ensure that every child in Florida—including the children of the construction workers, PR professionals, and bonding agents who make this ecosystem run—has access to safety, justice, and a chance at a stable life. It is a virtuous cycle, and each of these four organizations occupies an essential position within it.
What makes these firms exceptional is not just what they do but how thoroughly they do it. BoardroomPR doesn’t run cookie-cutter press campaigns—it embeds itself in each client’s industry and builds strategies from the inside out. ABC East Florida doesn’t simply check compliance boxes—it trains workers who can walk onto any jobsite in America with confidence and credentials. Justice For Kids doesn’t settle for quiet settlements—it pursues verdicts and reforms that change the way systems operate. And Guignard doesn’t just issue bonds—it builds bonding programs that grow alongside its clients’ ambitions.
Florida’s trajectory is unmistakable. The state’s population will continue to swell, its construction pipeline will remain one of the nation’s deepest, and the demand for specialized professional services will intensify. Within that landscape, BoardroomPR, ABC East Florida, Justice For Kids, and the Guignard Company are not merely participants—they are architects of the outcomes that define what the state becomes next. Their offices stretch from Naples to Orlando, from Coconut Creek to Alpharetta, and their collective impact is woven into the foundations, headlines, courtrooms, and contracts that keep Florida building, growing, and moving forward.
About the Author
