New Manager Seeks to Build on Heritage Center's Programs

Jasmine Harris recently took over as the new leader for the center that preserves and shares Black history and art in Winter Park

April 14, 2025

By Gabrielle Russon

Unhappy as a data analyst doing financial reports at her corporate job, Jasmine Harris quit and took a leap. She went back to the University of Central Florida to get her master’s degree in public history.

Harris, who comes from an unlikely background merging storytelling and numbers, started last month as the new manager handling day-to-day operations at the Hannibal Square Heritage Center.

“I’m right where I’m supposed to be,” Harris said after finding her calling.

Harris is part of a resurgence at the Heritage Center as its new leaders hope to build deeper ties in the community and move past the former leader’s firing that played out publicly in the headlines.

The Heritage Center, which opened in 2007 in the heart of Winter Park’s historically Black Hannibal Square neighborhood, is run by the nonprofit Crealdé School of Art in Winter Park which hired Emily Bourmas-Fry to take over as school’s executive director in January.

“With any transition, there’s always going to be a new structure, a new vision, fresh ideas,” Bourmas-Fry said. “We have been busy.”

Bourmas-Fry and Harris said they are in the process of building an advisory committee of longtime Winter Park residents to help guide the center with its programming and exhibits. 

They also hope to restart a quilting program and explore holding meditative classes similar to when people gathered there during the Black Lives Matter protests for a community healing space. Other ideas could be offering help for people researching their ancestry.

Bourmas-Fry said she wants the center to partner more with local arts organizations and work with other communities to help them document their local Black history too. She hopes the Heritage Center, which keeps written stories, photos and oral histories as well as offering walking tours, can be a case study on how to document local Black history.

While the neighborhood surrounding the center has been largely redeveloped over the past three decades, the center aims to “be a model for recording and celebrating the culture, history and heritage of threatened communities everywhere,” according to its website. 

“Not every community has something like this,” Bourmas-Fry said. “And I’d like to really reach out to those communities and find out how we can help them.”

What’s also important, Bourmas-Fry added, is building a stronger link between Crealdé and the Heritage Center to remind people the two separate campuses are connected and under the same umbrella.

Like all arts organizations, funding also remains a priority, Bourmas-Fry said. Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed millions of dollars from local arts groups last year — including $60,000 for Crealdé. Bourmas-Fry has joined arts advocates to lobby in Tallahassee for the funding to be reinstated.

The center also recently hired a new marketing coordinator, Xena de La Tour, to better promote the center on social media.

End of an Era

Having Harris on board fills a big hole for the Heritage Center. 

Outgoing Crealdé executive director Peter Schreyer let go of previous manager and longtime community advocate Barbara Chandler in December.

Chandler did not respond to a request for comment for this story, and Bourmas-Fry declined to comment on the specifics of what happened.

The Orlando Sentinel reported Chandler’s termination came after “unapproved partnerships, failure to communicate key details, and repeated disregard for Crealdé’s policies,” according to an email Chandler shared with the newspaper.

“I hate to see personnel issues played out publicly,” Winter Park Assistant Manager Michelle del Valle wrote in a Dec. 30 email to a city spokesman that was obtained by the Winter Park Voice recently through a public records request. The city of Winter Park owns the Heritage Center’s building.

Chandler argued she had been wrongfully terminated in an open letter she sent out.

Some of Chandlers’ supporters voiced their shock that Chandler, who was once recognized by the Sentinel for making Central Florida a better place to live in 2022, was fired.

“In my humble opinion, this is a great loss since she was the only person fully-focused on HSHC, and no one else has the depth of connections and network to maintain that momentum,” wrote Ruth Edwards, the Winter Park Library’s education director, in a Dec. 13 email to Winter Park Mayor Sheila DeCiccio.

Since then, Chandler has been busy with her company, Barbara Chandler Productions, according to a recent Orlando Weekly story. Chandler is working with the Winter Park Playhouse for a quarterly cabaret series called Sounds of the World. The one-night show played last month with new shows coming in the future while Chandler also works on exhibits and gives walking tours.

Both Harris and Bourmas-Fry praised Chandler for her impact at the center and community-building. 

“She left a wonderful legacy behind the Heritage Center,” Harris said.

Bringing Stories Out of the Shadows

On a recent tour to a first-time visitor, Harris paused in front of a photograph of a young Black man smiling in his high school band uniform. 

Harris read the caption out loud that told the story of the young man later fighting in the Vietnam War and dying back home alone after suffering from PTSD.

“The stories get lost,” Harris said as she reflected on the Heritage Center’s mission to remember Winter Park’s past. “It’s important to have them written down. If you don’t, then these stories stay in the shadows — marginalized voices.”

In her first few weeks on the job, Harris is learning Winter Park history and finding mentors who have lived it.

“I want to make sure I’m honoring the voices in this community because I understand I am an outsider coming in. I am African-American, but I am not from Winter Park,” said Harris, 29, who is originally from Boynton Beach and lives in Orlando.

It wasn’t until her high school senior year when Harris took African-American history. It clicked. In college, she switched her schedule to make room for history classes “even though my major was math and my advisors didn’t understand it,” Harris said. “OK, you’re taking Calculus 3 and then you’re going to the Psychology of the African-American? I dunno. I just like it all.”

Learning about Black history left Harris with a renewed sense of confidence and hope in a world where the lens into history is often framed by a white point-of-view. 

“As a young African-American woman growing up and looking at the mainstream to see that there’s nothing there … I had to go seek that out,” Harris said. “And it just makes you feel more whole in your identity as you navigate this world.”

Harris will finish her master’s in public history at UCF next year after getting her bachelor’s degree in actuarial science with a double minor in statistics and history, also at UCF.

Her background makes her a good fit for the job since Harris is already surveying visitors and analyzing trends which will help with growing the center and grant writing, said Bourmas-Fry who had reached out to UCF’s Africana Studies program for a recommendation when hiring the manager job.

“That was really vital for us, making sure that we got the right person,” Bourmas-Fry said. “Her breadth of knowledge and her love of history and her passion and the fact that she was so invested” is why Harris stood out.

Harris’ background focuses on African-American history from a global scale. Now, she is learning the dates and details in the 100-year-old-plus history of Winter Park to run the Heritage Center.

“I just can’t wait to see how I can be of service,” Harris said.

WinterParkVoiceEditor@gmail.com

Gabrielle Russon is a freelance reporter and former reporter for the Orlando Sentinel, where she covered K-12 education, colleges and universities and the tourism industry. She lives in Orlando with her family and writes about politics, education, theme parks and the courts.