There is a long table in Bridgette and Jose Bello's home that can seat two on a Tuesday and twelve, comfortably, by Saturday. But, this isn't a story about a table. It's about what the Bellos have spent most of their lives using the table for: bringing people together, making room, and rebuilding when life gets in the way.
Bridgette spent 35 years in media, becoming the first female publisher of the Tampa Bay Business Journal and later founding Tampa Bay Business & Wealth. She was paid to publish stories, but her real gift was always "seeing" people who should know one another and who belonged in a room together before anyone thought to invite them.
Jose learned his version of "the table" much earlier. His family left Cuba in 1967 and started over in Chicago. Soon after, his father found a battered table someone had discarded and carried it home. It was missing a leg, but it was theirs. Jose's mother, a seamstress, re-covered salvaged chairs. "That table felt like a million bucks," Jose said. "It was our first table in America."
Jose spent 13 years at The Tampa Tribune before the newspaper industry began competing against technology. Along the way, he walked into Bridgette's office with an idea and fifteen minutes to sell it. "The pitch was good," he quipped. "He was better," Bridgette counters.
They are not a couple who agree for sport. Jose will challenge something Bridgette considers obvious, and she will challenge why he's challenging her — dinner around their table has a way of becoming a strategy session, which they call their SWOT analysis.
For Bridgette, the biggest professional shift came when she finally asked herself a question she'd avoided for decades: "What would I build if it were totally mine?" The answer was, and is, The Executive Collective: a confidential, private peer group for owners, founders, and CEOs weary of carrying the weight of their decisions alone. For decades, she watched leaders shoulder alone what they couldn't safely talk about anywhere else. So instead of writing about the problem, she set out to solve it. "For the first time," she said, "nobody upstream or downstream gets to decide who belongs there, or what the business is allowed to become." Jose calls it "the thing I'd been trying to get her to do for years."
His own work has evolved toward what's always fit him best: relationships. Today, as Business Development Officer at Servis1st Bank, he's the guy who remembers, follows up, and makes business feel personal, not transactional. "My whole life had led up to it," he said — the same instinct about people that once won him his greatest sale of all: himself, to his wife.
Life has given the Bellos plenty of practice at rebuilding. Bridgette survived breast cancer and a difficult professional challenge; Jose faced an eliminated position through no fault of his own. When the 2024 hurricanes devastated their home a second time, the rebuild was messy, expensive, and slow — but they did it anyway, determined that others would always have somewhere to land.
Their home feels less like an asset and more like a place people are meant to gather. They host a 40-plus person "Friendsgiving" every year that's become a tradition for many. Their children come home. Their grandchildren will grow up knowing there's always a seat for them, and friends often stay longer than anyone planned. And yes, Bridgette cares what the table looks like, down to the pumpkins and flowers.
But the pretty, performative part is not the point; the point is what happens once everyone sits down. A good night around that table ends with people knowing each other better than before, maybe finding a commonality they can't ignore. "A life well lived," Bridgette said, "is one where the people around your table are better for having shared a meal with you. Not richer. Not more accomplished. Better."
That is the life Bridgette and Jose are building, finally on their own terms — not because they needed a bigger table, but because they learned long ago how to make room for the people they invite to it. And if they need a bigger table? They'll build one.
"A life well lived is one where the people around your table are better for having shared a meal with you. Not richer. Not more accomplished. Better."
"For the first time," she said, "nobody upstream or downstream gets to decide who belongs there, or what the business is allowed to become." Jose calls it "the thing I'd been trying to get her to do for years."