Fort Lauderdale, Fla. – Final interviews with two candidates for Broward College president/chief executive officer are set for 8:30 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 31. at the Willis Holcombe Center, 111 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale.
Torey Alston and Jose Llontop are the finalists for the position, the college District Board of Trustees announced.
Public forums for meeting the candidates were scheduled for this week at 1 p.m. at Bailey Hall on the A. Hugh Adams Central Campus, 3501 Davie Rd., Davie. Due to health reasons restricting travel, Llontop was to participate virtually on Wednesday, Jan. 29; and Alston on Thursday, Jan. 30 in person.
According to information provided by the candidates, Alston is a Broward County native who recently was admitted into the education doctoral program at the University of Miami. He is a product of the county public schools who attended Walker Elementary, Parkway Middle and Blanche Ely High School. Alston received his undergraduate degree in business administration from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) and earned a master’s in business administration with a concentration in marketing and management.
Llontop, who lives in the Washington, DC area with his family, holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia, an MBA from Rice University and graduated from the general management program at Harvard Business.
TOREY ALSTON
Torey Alston has spent nearly 20 years as a public servant in Florida. In 2010, Gov. Charlie Crist appointed him to serve on the Florida A&M University Board of Trustees. Subsequent to that, Gov. Rick Scott reappointed Alston to serve out the full five-year term ending January 2015, where he served as chair of the Student Affairs/Academic Affairs Committee and Governance Committee.
Alston then served two stints under former Superintendent Alberto Carvalho’s senior leadership team with the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, leading implementation of the 2012 General Obligation Bond Program updating technology, academic programs, school construction and renovation of existing facilities.
In October 2021, Alston became the first leader of the Greater Miami Expressway Agency (GMX), where he led the transition from the dissolved MDX to the new GMX, today an agency with $3 billion in assets and $270 million in revenue.
Previously, Alston served as chief of staff for the Florida Department of Transportation, with more than 6,200 employees and a $10.3 billion budget, the principal advisor to the FDOT secretary and main facilitator for other state agencies on matters of administration, policy, and overall agency operations.
In November 2021, Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him to the Broward County Commission (District 9), where he served as a member of the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, Value Adjustment Board, Circuit 17 Juvenile Justice Advisory Board and Pompano Beach N.W. Residential Advisory Board.
In August 2022, DeSantis appointed Alston to the School Board of Broward County, which he would go on to chair.
JOSE LLONTOP
Llontop is currently an independent director of the board at the Barton Group, a manufacturer of garnet material used in Waterjet cutting and sandblasting applications, where he serves as the chair of the Audit & Finance, and as a member of the Nominating & Governance Committees. He is an executive partner at Salt Creek Capital, a San Francisco Bay Area-based private investment firm.
Llontop brings more than 30 years of general management experience in the building materials and industrial manufacturing sectors. Prior to these roles, He previously was president & CEO at Giant Cement Holding Inc. a $250 million revenue Cement Company, where he led the company’s turnaround from a negative operating profit position to $37 million in EBITDA within a four-year period, prior to selling a majority stake – at a premium valuation – to a Mexican conglomerate owned by the Carlos Slim group.
His success at branding commodity products and shape strategy in the cement industry caught the attention of academia, most recently in a Darden School of Business case study which he co-authored. Prior to that Llontop was the main protagonist in a Harvard Business case study (“CEMEX: Rewarding the Egyptian Retailers,” HBS, March 22, 2006).
An active sports enthusiast, Llontop received a full scholarship to play soccer at the University of Virginia after being chosen as a Soccer All American in Junior College.
The Broward College president serves as the chief executive officer of the college and corporate secretary of the Board of Trustees.
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