Local executive lands new job

Tom Randle, one of the longest tenured credit union executives on the Gulf Coast, is going from building home loan portfolios to actually building homes.

Randle, who most recently had been the chief executive of the Sarasota Coastal Credit Union, began an interim job as executive director of the Sarasota division of Habitat for Humanity Nov. 9. Randle says his new job is a quintessential stroke of good timing: Habitat's previous top executive, Tony Souza, resigned just as Randle found himself out of a job when Sarasota Coastal merged with a larger Pinellas County credit union Oct. 30.

Through some acquaintances, Randle met with Habitat's board about its vacant leadership position. The board asked Randle to take over for the rest of 2009, to focus mostly on strategic planning for 2010.