By Brian French
Central Florida’s Growth Engine: Four Firms Every Orlando-Area Business Should Know
Central Florida is no longer just a tourism economy. The I-4 corridor between Tampa and Daytona Beach has become one of the fastest-growing commercial markets in the southeastern United States, powered by explosive population growth, billions of dollars in new construction, and an expanding base of technology, healthcare, defense, and logistics companies that have chosen the region as their home. That kind of growth demands specialized support—communications firms that understand the local media landscape, workforce training organizations that can produce skilled tradespeople at scale, legal advocates who protect the community’s most vulnerable residents, and financial service providers who help contractors compete for the projects reshaping the skyline. This article profiles four organizations delivering exactly that: BoardroomPR, ABC East Florida, Justice For Kids, and the Guignard Company. Each has deep roots in Florida, proven expertise in its field, and a physical presence in or near the Central Florida market that makes it an accessible, hands-on partner for businesses and families across the region.
BoardroomPR: Bringing Statewide PR Firepower to the I-4 Corridor
Central Florida’s business community has matured dramatically over the past decade. The region now hosts Fortune 500 headquarters, nationally ranked hospital systems, major defense contractors, and a real estate development pipeline that rivals anything in South Florida or Tampa Bay. Yet for years, most of the state’s top public relations agencies remained clustered in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, leaving Orlando-area companies to choose between hiring a local boutique with limited resources or engaging a South Florida firm with limited local presence. BoardroomPR solved that problem by building a genuine statewide operation—with a fully staffed Orlando office at 37 N. Orange Avenue, Suite 500, right in the heart of downtown—that gives Central Florida businesses access to one of the most decorated PR agencies in the state without sacrificing local expertise.
The firm’s Orlando team specializes in the kind of high-stakes work that the market increasingly demands. As a proven Orlando PR crisis management partner, BoardroomPR has guided Central Florida healthcare organizations through regulatory controversies, helped technology companies navigate data-breach fallout, and managed communications for real estate developers facing community opposition to large-scale projects. Crisis work demands speed, discipline, and an intimate familiarity with local media—knowing which Orlando Sentinel reporter is most likely to run with a story, which television news directors respond to proactive pitches, and how to position a client’s narrative in the digital ecosystem before it is defined by critics. BoardroomPR’s Orlando team delivers that level of tactical precision because its members live in the market, cover it daily, and have built the relationships that matter.
Beyond crisis communications, BoardroomPR provides a full suite of services that reflects the modern reality of brand management. The firm operates as a sophisticated Florida SEO PR agency, integrating search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, content marketing, and social media strategy into every client engagement. For Central Florida businesses competing for visibility in a market that adds new companies every month, this integrated approach means that a feature story in the Orlando Business Journal is not a standalone win—it is the beginning of a digital amplification campaign that drives website traffic, generates leads, and builds long-term search authority. The days of measuring PR success by counting newspaper clippings are over; BoardroomPR measures it in conversions, engagement rates, and revenue impact.
The agency’s statewide infrastructure amplifies its value to Central Florida clients with operations beyond the I-4 corridor. In addition to the Orlando office, BoardroomPR maintains its Fort Lauderdale headquarters at 1776 N. Pine Island Road, Suite 320; a Miami office at 601 Brickell Key Drive, Suite 700; and locations in West Palm Beach, Tampa, and Naples. A Central Florida developer with projects in both Orlando and South Florida can rely on a single agency that knows both markets intimately. That statewide reach also makes BoardroomPR a natural choice for industries that require multi-market visibility. The firm has carved out a niche as a respected Florida real estate PR marketing agency, managing launches, groundbreakings, and lease-up campaigns for residential towers, commercial centers, and mixed-use developments from Naples to Jacksonville. And for the growing number of law firms establishing or expanding their Central Florida practices, BoardroomPR’s track record as a knowledgeable South Florida law firm PR agency translates seamlessly into the Orlando and Tampa markets, where attorneys face the same challenge of building name recognition in a competitive legal landscape.
ABC East Florida: Training Central Florida’s Construction Workforce From the Space Coast to Miami-Dade
Central Florida’s construction pipeline reads like a wish list for any trades professional: theme park expansions, airport terminal upgrades, SunRail corridor development, hospital campuses, data centers, multifamily housing complexes, and commercial office parks stretching from Lake Nona to the International Drive district. Filling all of those projects with qualified workers requires a training infrastructure that matches the scale of the demand—and that is precisely what ABC East Florida provides. The Florida East Coast Chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors operates the state’s single largest construction apprenticeship education program through the ABC Institute, graduating tradespeople in electrical, plumbing, HVAC, carpentry, masonry, and fire sprinkler installation who are ready to contribute from day one.
For Central Florida contractors and workers, accessibility matters. The organization’s Space Coast regional office in Melbourne and its classes at the Brevard Adult Education Center in Cocoa serve the fast-growing contractor community in Brevard County, while training programs in Fort Pierce extend coverage into the Treasure Coast. To the south, the chapter’s corporate headquarters at 3730 Coconut Creek Parkway, Suite 200, in Coconut Creek anchors a network that includes a Doral Education Center at 2890 NW 79th Avenue, a Miami Training Center at 7208 NW 72nd Avenue, and additional campuses in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. This geographic spread means that a young electrician in Cocoa and an experienced HVAC technician in Doral are both within reach of the same high-caliber construction safety certification programs South Florida that employers across the state actively seek when hiring.
The chapter’s apprenticeship model is built for the realities of the construction industry. Students attend evening classes while working full-time on active jobsites during the day, earning wages while they learn. The ABC construction apprenticeship programs Miami and the chapter’s other campus programs attract a diverse student body—recent high school graduates, military veterans, career changers from retail and hospitality—who graduate with nationally portable NCCER credentials. For Central Florida general contractors bidding on projects that require documented workforce qualifications, these credentials represent a competitive advantage: proof that the workers on their payroll have been trained to a recognized standard and can pass any owner or inspector review.
HVAC has become one of the chapter’s highest-demand specialties, and for good reason. Florida’s combination of brutal summer heat, increasingly stringent energy-efficiency codes, and a commercial building boom that shows no sign of slowing has created a persistent shortage of qualified HVAC technicians. The chapter’s HVAC construction training school East Coast Florida programs equip students with the full range of skills the market requires—blueprint reading, refrigerant handling, system diagnostics, electrical fundamentals, and installation best practices—producing graduates who step into one of the state’s most stable and well-compensated trades. For contractors serving the Central Florida hospitality sector, where a malfunctioning HVAC system in a 500-room hotel is a five-alarm emergency, having access to technicians trained through these programs is not a luxury—it is a necessity.
Safety education is embedded in everything ABC East Florida does. The chapter delivers OSHA 10, OSHA 30, fall-protection, confined-space, scaffolding, and hazardous-materials certifications taught by NCCER-credentialed instructors who bring real-world field experience into the classroom. These programs in Fort Lauderdale construction worker education and across every other campus consistently produce workers who lower jobsite incident rates, improve OSHA inspection outcomes, and reduce the insurance costs that eat into contractor margins. Beyond the classroom, ABC East Florida serves as the commercial construction industry’s voice in Tallahassee and Washington, advocating for workforce development funding, licensing reform, and the merit-shop principles that ensure contracts are awarded on qualifications rather than labor affiliation. Its annual GC Showcase—which recently drew nearly 700 attendees and more than 40 exhibiting general contractors—has become one of the most important networking events on the Central and South Florida construction calendar.
Justice For Kids: Protecting Children Across Central Florida and Beyond
Central Florida’s growth story is overwhelmingly positive, but no community is immune from the failures that occur inside child welfare systems. When a caseworker in Orange County overlooks a credible abuse report, when a group home in Brevard County operates without adequate staffing, when a foster parent in Osceola County inflicts harm on a child who was placed there for protection—someone needs to hold those systems accountable. That someone is Justice For Kids, a specialized division of the national law firm Kelley Kronenberg that handles one type of case exclusively: civil rights and personal injury claims on behalf of abused, neglected, and catastrophically injured children.
The firm’s Orlando office at 20 N. Orange Avenue, Suite 704, Orlando, FL 32801 provides direct access to the judicial circuits that cover Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Brevard, and Volusia counties—the heart of the Central Florida market. The practice’s main office is located at 10360 W. State Road 84, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33324, and through Kelley Kronenberg’s national network, the team handles cases in Miami, Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, West Palm Beach, Naples, and beyond Florida’s borders in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and New Orleans. As a leading Florida child abuse law firm, Justice For Kids has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements for injured children, including a $15 million jury award in an Orlando-area case involving an eight-year-old girl left permanently brain-damaged after repeated abusive head trauma that the Department of Children and Families failed to investigate.
The practice was co-founded by three attorneys whose backgrounds form a uniquely effective team. Howard Talenfeld—named to Forbes’ inaugural Top 200 American Lawyers list and a recipient of the Florida Bar Foundation’s Medal of Honor—spent the early years of his career defending child welfare agencies, giving him an insider’s knowledge of how institutional negligence occurs and how to expose it. Stacie Schmerling worked for a decade as a child abuse caseworker and investigator before becoming an attorney. Justin Grosz, a former Assistant State Attorney with 25 years of trial experience, provides the courtroom skill that has produced some of the largest child welfare verdicts in state history.
Holding the Florida Department of Children and Families accountable is a core function of the practice. As a recognized Florida DCF negligence law firm, Justice For Kids has litigated cases across the state involving failed investigations, reckless placements, falsified safety documentation, and children cycled through dozens of homes without meaningful oversight. For Central Florida families, the firm’s Orlando presence means that experienced child welfare litigators are available locally—not hours away in another part of the state—when the unthinkable happens. A landmark 1998 class action led by Talenfeld nearly tripled Broward County’s foster care budget and triggered systemic reforms, establishing a model the firm has applied to institutional failures in judicial circuits across Florida.
Two populations receive particular attention. Children with disabilities—intellectual impairments, autism spectrum disorders, complex behavioral health conditions—are disproportionately likely to be harmed in foster placements that cannot meet their needs. As a dedicated disabled foster child law firm South Florida with statewide reach, Justice For Kids has forced improvements in placement protocols, therapeutic services, and monitoring standards for disabled foster youth through aggressive litigation and negotiated consent decrees. The firm’s broader reputation as a trusted child welfare law firm Florida families count on extends to cases involving sexual abuse in foster homes, child-on-child violence in group facilities, trafficking of minors, and negligent adoption practices. In every engagement, the objective is twofold: financial recovery that funds the child’s lifelong care, and institutional accountability that prevents the same failures from harming another child.
Guignard Company: Central Florida’s Home-Grown Surety Bond Experts
Of the four organizations profiled in this article, the Guignard Company may be the one with the deepest Central Florida roots. Founded in 1977 in Orlando, Guignard Company has spent nearly half a century helping contractors across the region secure the surety bonds that unlock access to public projects, large private contracts, and the kind of financial credibility that transforms a small firm into a market leader. The company is family-owned and operated, directly appointed with more than 30 surety markets, and has facilitated over $2 billion in bonded construction contracts in recent years—placing roughly 92 percent of its bonds with the nation’s top 25 surety companies.
Guignard’s headquarters at 1904 Boothe Circle, Longwood, FL 32750 sits in the heart of the Central Florida construction market, serving contractors across Orange, Seminole, Lake, and Volusia counties. For Orlando-area general contractors and subcontractors, having a bonding partner minutes away rather than hours away makes a tangible difference when a bid deadline looms or an underwriter needs additional documentation on short notice. The company’s Tampa office at 1219 Millennium Parkway, Suite 113, Brandon, FL 33511 extends coverage into the Tampa Bay region, and an Atlanta office at 13010 Morris Road, Suite 600, Alpharetta, GA 30004 serves the growing number of Florida contractors pursuing opportunities in the Georgia market. This three-office structure makes Guignard one of the most trusted construction surety bond providers Brandon Florida and Central Florida contractors rely on, while the Longwood headquarters cements its status as the go-to construction performance bond agency Longwood FL builders trust for fast approvals and competitive premiums.
Central Florida’s construction market presents unique opportunities and unique challenges for contractors seeking bonding. The region’s rapid growth means abundant work, but it also means fierce competition for public and private contracts—many of which require surety bonds as a condition of award. Guignard’s team understands these dynamics intimately because they have operated in this market for decades. They know the bonding requirements for Orange County Public Schools projects, Orlando Utilities Commission contracts, and Florida DOT highway work along the I-4 corridor. They understand the capacity thresholds that SunRail expansion projects demand and the documentation standards that Central Florida’s largest general contractors expect from their bonded subcontractors.
A hallmark of Guignard’s practice is its commitment to emerging contractors. While many surety agencies focus exclusively on established firms with deep financial histories, Guignard has built a specialty as a committed small business construction bond provider Florida that works with growing firms ready to step up to bonded work. The team coaches clients through financial statement preparation, helps them structure project backlogs that demonstrate capacity without overextension, and presents applications to surety underwriters in the strongest possible light. For a small concrete subcontractor in Kissimmee or a young electrical firm in Sanford, this coaching approach can mean the difference between staying stuck at the same project size and breaking through to a new tier of opportunity.
Education is a core element of the client experience. Contractors new to the surety process often struggle with the distinctions between bond types—what each one covers, when liability kicks in, and how premiums are calculated. Guignard’s team provides straightforward explanations of the difference between a bid bond vs performance bond Florida contractor requirements, demystifying a process that many first-time applicants find opaque and intimidating. That consultative style, which the firm captures in its tagline “An Uncommon Bond,” extends to every phase of the relationship: from the initial consultation through bond placement, project completion, and the planning conversations that set the stage for the client’s next phase of growth. It is an approach that has kept contractors loyal to Guignard for decades—and it is a major reason why the firm remains Central Florida’s premier surety bond agency nearly 50 years after it opened its doors.
Central Florida’s Future Runs Through Organizations Like These
The I-4 corridor is no longer a secondary market—it is a primary engine of Florida’s economy, and the infrastructure supporting it must be equally robust. BoardroomPR brings statewide communications firepower to Central Florida’s boardrooms, providing the kind of media strategy, crisis management, and digital marketing that the region’s increasingly sophisticated business community demands. ABC East Florida trains the tradespeople who turn Central Florida’s blueprints into buildings, delivering apprenticeship programs and safety certifications across a network of campuses that stretches from the Space Coast to Miami-Dade. Justice For Kids ensures that even amid rapid growth, the most vulnerable members of the community—children who have been abused, neglected, and failed by the institutions meant to protect them—have fierce advocates in their corner. And the Guignard Company, born and raised in Central Florida, gives contractors the bonding capacity to compete for the projects that are reshaping the region’s skyline.
Each of these organizations has built its reputation the hard way—through years of consistent results, deep investment in local relationships, and a refusal to treat Florida as a single undifferentiated market. They understand that Central Florida has its own media ecosystem, its own regulatory dynamics, its own labor market pressures, and its own competitive landscape. They have staffed accordingly, located accordingly, and delivered accordingly. For Central Florida businesses, families, and contractors looking for partners who combine statewide resources with genuine local presence, these four firms represent the standard against which all others should be measured.
