As an educational thought leader within the LGBTQIA+ community, Jonathon Pritchard has made it his life’s mission to expand the frontiers of acceptance through special programming, speaking, and outreach. Within this role, Pritchard’s primary goal is to recruit, develop relationships with, and support LGBTQIA+ and ally-based economic business development. His mantra “Shop, Travel & Entertain with Pride” isn’t just catchy, it’s his calling – join Jonathon as this educational ambassador seeks to grow all communities with mutual understanding and most of all “pride.”

Jonathon’s ancillary experiences include (but are not limited to) an executive Restaurant Consultant. Executive Food & Beverage, and Hospitality Operations Management.

A word from Jonathon:

"I was living in Kenneth City, which is a suburb of St. Petersburg, Florida, and there was a yacht club that reached out to me. My background is in food and beverage, mostly private clubs, yacht clubs, and country clubs. And they asked me to interview for a job and they said, you can have the job if you'll be here in a week there. Yacht Club was on the East Coast of Florida, and I was living on the west coast of Florida. So my, uh, partner and I started doing some research to see if there was any place where we could meet people because I'd never lived on that side of the state. State. I've lived off and on in the Tampa Bay area for many years, knew a lot of people around here. We found what we thought was three gay bars in the area. When we got over there, there was none. 

The last one had burned to the ground, so the closest place to go out and meet people was Orlando and rra. And I just don't drink and drive like that. So I started asking some of the kids at, at work, there was a couple gay people, and I said, well, where do gay people meet? Nowhere? And I'm all like, well, like in Sarasota, there's an Outback Steakhouse on Tuesday nights. The group gets, there's nothing like that over here. And everybody's like, no. And even there was a pride, but it was so well hidden that we lived there for three years and didn't even realize there was pride."