Familiar Faces: Rogelio Capote

Rogelio Capote knows he’s a people-pleaser.

That phrase can mean different things to different people, and the senior vice president of marketing and community relations of CAN Community Health has felt it as a positive all his life. He says he works hard to be there for people if they need him.

“I want people to be happy, I want them to be having a good time,” Capote said. “When you get to know me, I’m just a big teddy bear.”

He sometimes wonders if people could view his nature as a bad thing — that he’s too nice — but in his heart, he knows that it’s anything but.

“You truly never know what someone is going through in their life,” Capote says. “If I can bring a short amount of happiness to (someone’s) day, it’s worth it.”

He’s been busy doing that at CAN Community Health, a local nonprofit that provides treatment and care for people living with HIV. His responsibilities started in planning events and have since expanded to a more bird’s eye view handling marketing and community relations with his own staff. 

It’s been a time of reflection for Sarasota social planner. Fortunately, he feels like he’s still finding new ways to pursue his passions

“I love where I am, I love Sarasota,” Capote said. “Though it might be good to travel a little more.” 

Capote was born and raised in Miami before attending the University of Florida where he studied tourism, recreation and sports management. It was shortly after that he found himself working for the Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota in the mid-2000s.

“My family has vacationed here in Sarasota since I was a kid,” Capote said. “It just felt right (when I moved here). Sarasota has definitely become more crowded, but the heart is still there.”

The career focus in hospitality made sense. Capote recalls traveling with his parents as a child and being taken by the level of warmth and kindness shown by hotel staff to tenants. There was something about the human element provided by staff that he was drawn to.

“I was infatuated with hotels,” Capote said. “It was the human experience that came with hospitality. The warm welcome, the experience where you walk in and the room was already made — that curated (feeling).

But working in the hotel sector forever wasn’t meant to be, and Capote felt himself searching for a new vocation. He settled on the nonprofit world working with the children’s hospice department at the Tidewell Hospice organization.  

It was there he served as a team coordinator and medical interpreter for Spanish families at the hospice.

“I loved it, I won’t lie,” Capote said. “It was making a difference in the world, making a difference in someone’s life even if for a brief moment.”

He did good work — work he remains proud of to this day. There was a 12-year-old hospice patient that Capote grew close with that he still thinks about. 

Capote says he and staff helped give the patient a great Christmas and he remembers how much she thrived that day. The day after, she passed away. 

“I still have a photo of us decorating gingerbread cookies in my office,” Capote said. “That photo travels with me, it’s been with me ever since that day.”

Eventually Capote felt he’d done all he could with Tidewell and looked to new horizons, first starting his own flower shop and events design company in the Rosemary District. It was a short walk from his hospitality roots, and Capote relished the chance to bring his own personality and warmth to the event world. 

“(I loved) providing a beautiful decor design that made people smile,” Capote said. “People always said they could always tell what my designs were. It just came naturally to me.”

Capote eventually hung up his own business but stayed in the events industry, eventually working at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. 

His event work there caught the idea of CAN Community Health, who hired Capote to be their director of advancement to handle events and marketing.

One of his first tasks was updating the signature CANDance fundraiser, which Capote says at the time often had an black-and-white color scheme and photography in its marketing. 

That had its value, but Capote felt the starkness of that palate could make the event feel somber. He added color and some energy to the endeavor he remains proud of.

He moved that elegant approach and aesthetic to the new Red Ribbon Gala, a more formal affair that brought high-profile celebrity guests to headline each event. 

The initial event brought Billy Porter and MJ Rodriguez to Sarasota in 2019 while the upcoming gala will feature Laverne Cox at the Tampa Museum of Art. 

Capote has ideas for future guests he’d like to have headline Red Ribbon, and there’s one figure that stands above the rest.

“It’s always going to be Elton John,” Capote said. 

Capote’s position as senior vice president of marketing and community relations at CAN has had its challenges of sorts. For someone as focused on getting things done as Capote, learning to rely on delegation has been a new experience. 

But for Capote, that’s the fun of it. 

“As much as I love events and designing the experience, I’ve had to evolve in what my priorities are,” Capote says. “It’s allowed me to have a bird’s eye view of what I’m passionate about — the bigger picture.”

Watching his staff start to grow and bring in their own thoughts in the event planning process has been rewarding for Capote. 

And he feels good that there are new challenges ahead. The upcoming Red Ribbon gala will be held in Tampa for the first time — Capote says the idea is to have the gala at different CAN locations for a couple years at a time before having it return home to Sarasota — and he feels invigorated by the new logistics to figure out. 

He’ll have some help in doing that, of course.

“I want to grow my team,” Capote said.