USD Magazine Spring 2021

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public relations, but I wasn’t getting any interest.” He paus- es, and laughs. “Did I have a degree in communications? No. Did I have a portfolio? No. Had I ever written a press re- lease? Also, no. Maybe that’s why no one wanted to hire me.” So a friend suggested a way in: “He told me to go to a non- profit and do an internship so I could get experience.” He wound out up at Project Con- cern International, and realized he’d accidentally found his niche. “I just fell in love with the non-

hat next chapter was a long one: two decades, in fact. About 18 months

Floros is proud of the work he did there. “Over 20 years, we built the organization to be- come the top burn foundation in the nation. We went from a staff of four to 12, still pretty small for a nonprofit, but it was trial by fire,” he says. “I always tell people, ‘I may not be the smartest. I may not be the best, but no one’s going to outhustle me. I’m a Packers fan, and I love the saying, ‘The harder you work, the luckier you get.’” He came on board as presi- dent and CEO of the Jacobs &

food bank contributes 94 cents of each donated dollar to pro- gram services. “We’re raising a lot of money, and we’re spend- ing a lot of money,” he says. “Prior to COVID, in a typical year, we’d spend about $1 mil- lion on food. This year, we’ve spent $10 million since mid- March. We’ve gotten 25,000 new donors since then; these are people who had never given to us and never thought about the food bank. But now, they’re heavily invested in what we do.”

into a new job as director of development for the Burn Institute, Floros was installed as interim CEO on his 33rd birthday. “I was a deer in the headlights,” he recalls. “I always thought I would have this sage mentor that would teach me how to be a CEO, and suddenly, there I was. The fire service had a lot of influ- ence, and they said, ‘Jim is our guy; we want him to be CEO.’

Cushman San Diego Food Bank — the largest hunger-relief or- ganization in San Diego Coun- ty — in 2013. While he’s led a variety of initiatives during his time there, such as achieving LEED Gold status and expand- ing services to North County, the COVID-19 pandemic and its ripple effect on the economy has been unprecedented. Hus- tle has become a job require- ment in 2020. Floros is poised to do what it takes to meet the need, howev- er great. He’s proud that the

Providing food is just part of the solution. “Even though we’re not an environmental organization — our mandate is to feed people — we realized if we’re more environmentally conscious, we could save a lot of money, which means you feed more people. We started by putting 1,400 solar panels on the roof, which saves us $120,000 a year, equal to about 600,000 meals.” Other efforts have included investing in technology that keeps food product refuse out

profit thing. They liked me enough to give me a stipend,” he recalls. He was ultimately hired as a coordinator in the development department. “I just wanted to learn, so I asked to sit in on meetings and learned grant writing, interacted with program staff, learned to do budgets … I probably had five dif- ferent titles in seven or eight years. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was learning so much that really served me well, especially in the next step in my career.”

“Personally, I think it was the mustache.” One of the main things he loved about the Burn Institute was the close relationship the organization had with the fire service. “I think that’s part of the reason why I stayed so long,” he muses. “I just had so much fun, and I love the fire- fighters and the fire chiefs. When you’re a part of the Burn Institute — for everybody who supports it — it’s going to be their cause for life.”

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