2024 Perfect Pitch Honoree Jennifer O. Rominiecki

President & CEO of Mary Selby Botanical Gardens

Jennifer O. Rominiecki began her tenure as President and Chief Executive Officer of Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in February 2015. Since she arrived, she repositioned the institution as The Living Museum®, securing a trademark from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Enacting this new operating model has yielded increases of 170% in membership and 141% in overall earned revenues. Rominiecki has also overseen the creation and execution of a five-year Strategic Plan, a new three-year Strategic Plan, as well as an innovative Master Site Plan for which more than $57 million has been raised.  Phase One of the Master Site Plan opened to the public in January 2024, creating the first net positive energy botanical garden complex in the world.

In May 2020, she oversaw the adoption of Historic Spanish Point as a companion campus to Selby Gardens’ Downtown Sarasota location to form one organization with two bayfront sanctuaries connecting people to air plants of the world, native nature, and regional history.

She possesses twenty years of experience at major New York City cultural institutions. Rominiecki served The New York Botanical Garden for 15 years in increasing roles of responsibility. As the Garden’s Vice President for Institutional Advancement and Special Assistant to the President, she was involved in many aspects of the organization’s management, including oversight of the Garden’s seven-year campaign to raise $479 million. Earlier in her career, Rominiecki held key positions at The Metropolitan Opera and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Art History and English from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with Honors in Art History. Rominiecki also completed the Women’s Leadership Forum at Harvard Business School in June 2017, is a member of Leadership Florida Cornerstone Class XXXVI, and is a member of the International Women’s Forum Florida Suncoast Chapter. Rominiecki is the former Chair of the Board of VISIT FLORIDA. She currently serves on the Boards of the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County, the Sarasota African American Cultural Coalition, the Science and Environment Council of Southwest Florida, as well as the Southeast Advisory Council of Lafayette College. 

During Rominiecki’s tenure, she and Selby Gardens have received numerous awards. Most recently, Selby Gardens was selected for TIME’s annual list of the World’s Greatest Places for 2024. In addition, Visit Sarasota named Rominiecki the 2024 Voice of Sarasota; the Business and Professional Women of North Sarasota named Rominiecki a Woman of the Year for 2024; and the Climate Adaptation Center named Rominiecki a Climate Champion and presented her with a 2024 Climate Champion Beacon Award. In 2023, Florida Trend Magazine named Rominiecki to the Florida 500, a list of Florida’s most influential business leaders representing 500 candidates across major industries.  The Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce named Selby Gardens the Woman Led Business of the Year in 2021 and the Small Business of the Year in 2019.  In 2019, Rominiecki was named a Businesswoman of the Year Honoree by Tampa Bay Business Journal. In 2017, she was honored with the AJC Civic Achievement Award and the Leadership Award for Arts Management from the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County. She has also received SRQ Magazine’s Women in Business “Hear Me Roar” Leadership Award in 2016.

Rominiecki lives in Sarasota with her husband, Robert, and their two boys.