Two Alumni Awarded for Entrepreneurship and Family Business

University of Tampa alumni and entrepreneurs Doug Rothschild, managing principal of the commercial real estate firm Cassidy Turley, and Stewart Moon Jr. of Air & Energy, were honored at the UT Entrepreneurship Center’s third annual Business and Entrepreneur Alumni Awards event.

The event was held on Feb. 20, and approximately 75 people attended the ceremony to network and celebrate fellow alumni at UT’s Plant Hall. The purpose of the event is to recognize the accomplishments of UT alumni who have started their own companies.

Rothschild, a 1981 UT graduate, was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Rothschild began working in commercial real estate in 1981, and he has spent the majority of his business career representing national clients such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and Xerox. From 1981 to 1995, Rothschild was a “Top 5” broker at CBRE. Additionally, he has served as a former chairman for the Westshore Alliance, a business-based organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for the nearly 94,000 employees in Tampa’s Westshore District. He also served on the board of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, and currently serves on the UT Board of Trustees.

Stewart Moon Jr., a 2010 UT graduate, was presented with the Entrepreneurship Center's Alumni Family Business Award. Air & Energy has been in business for more than 30 years, but Moon has brought new-age thinking and innovative products to Air & Energy. "We're doing new and exciting things that our competition isn't doing; and our customers are loving it," Moon said.

The event was sponsored this year by UT alumnus Dr. Alan Shoopak, president of Orthodontic Specialists of Florida and previous winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award. The event traditionally precedes the student-run Southeast Entrepreneurship Conference (SEEC), which was held on Feb. 21. Two UT alumni, Ray Ingersoll of the Ingersoll Group, and Benson Riseman of the BENSEA Company, gave keynote addresses at the conference.

The event was coordinated by the UT Entrepreneurship Center, which was recently named the Outstanding Emerging Entrepreneurship Program by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

For more information, see www.ut.edu/entrepreneurcenter.