Charles Pattison

Charles has served since 1998 as the Executive Director of 1000 Friends of Florida.  Previously, he was the Director for the Division of Resource Planning and Management at the Department of Community Affairs from 1992 to 1998. 

From 1989 to 1992, he worked as a Field Representative for The Nature Conservancy’s Virginia Coast Reserve.  Between 1983 and 1989, he opened the DCA Florida Keys Field Office in Key West, served as the Monroe County Planning, Building and Zoning Director, and was the first executive director of the Monroe County Land Authority. 

Charles also has also served as a planning director in coastal North Carolina and spent five years with the North Carolina Office of Coastal Management in beach access and coastal permitting work.  A North Carolina native and an Eagle Scout, he received an undergraduate degree from N.C.State in Raleigh and a Masters in Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina.  He spent six years working on coastal development issues in North Carolina before moving back to Florida. 

A member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, he serves on the Florida Conflict Resolution Consortium Advisory Council, Betton Hills Neighborhood Association, and Apalachee Land Conservancy.  He is a graduate of Leadership Florida, Class 18.  In 2005, Charles was appointed by Senate President Tom Lee to a four year term on the Century Commission for a Sustainable Florida.

 For further information about 1000 Friends:   www.1000friendsofflorida.org 
 

 Neil Skene

Neil Skene is a Tallahassee lawyer and private investor who writes the monthly Tallahassee Trend column for Florida Trend magazine.

He has a long and distinguished career reporting on and analyzing government. He was the Tallahassee bureau chief for the St. Petersburg Times 1980-84, then was editor of the now-closed Evening Independent in St. Petersburg and served on the editorial board of the Times. He then was executive editor at Congressional Quarterly Inc. in Washington for three years, 1987-89, and then served as president and publisher of the company until 1997. The company publishes the highly regarded CQ Weekly magazine on Congress, Governing magazine on state and local government, and a number of reference and college books on government. He also served on the board of directors of Times Publishing for 10 years.

He left CQ in 1997 to become senior vice president for editorial at Individual Inc., an Internet pioneer in Boston. When that company was acquired in 1998, he co-founded the Classified Intelligence consulting group focusing on interactive classified advertising. He also is a stockholder in Creative Loafing Inc., which owns alternative weekly newspapers in Atlanta, Charlotte, Tampa and Sarasota, and served for a time as senior vice president of the company. He also is president of a group of family investment companies. His law practice focuses on trusts and estates and small business organization, and he is a member of the Florida Bar’s Media & Communications Law Committee.

Neil earned his B.A. degree in political science from VanderbiltUniversity and his J.D. degree (magna cum laude) from MercerUniversityLawSchool. He served as a trustee of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg for 14 years, ending in 2001. He was a member of the Board of Visitors of the MercerUniversityLawSchool, including two years as chairman, and was the founding chair of the Board of Advisers of the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley in 1989.  He has been an adjunct professor at the StetsonLawSchool and at the Florida State University College of Social Science. During the past year he has spoken at a conference on Middle East journalism in Beirut and has led professional development programs and university seminars on journalism and newsroom management under U.S. State Department sponsorship in South Africa and other African countries.