Bank CEO backs Cook's announcement

Trevor Burgess, CEO of St. Petersburg-based C1 Bank, has talked for years about how being an openly gay CEO of a publicly traded company — like he is — shouldn't matter.

Burgess, who has run C1 Bank since 2009, made that point on a national scale Oct. 30, when Apple CEO Tim Cook announced he was gay. Cook, in an essay in Bloomberg Businessweek, wrote that “if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it's worth the trade-off with my own privacy.”

The declaration drew global media attention. A runner-up for the Business Observer's 2014 Entrepreneur of the year Award, Burgess was quoted in front page stories in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. He was also interviewed live on CNBC's “Squawk on the Street” show. Here are some of Burgess' comments: