Member Spotlight - Blake Moorman

Blake Moorman
Director of sales at Fort worth convention center

 
Blake Moorman as the Vice President of Rotary Club of Fort Worth, but in his vocation, he is the Director of Sales at the Fort Worth Convention Center. As the leader of an enterprise department, his role is to help bring revenue to the City in the form of meetings and events to the convention center.
 
Along with holding a position on the Rotary board, Moorman is an active member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). “A lot of the organizations that I am a part of have common interests in education, the arts, and political awareness, so that tends to be where you see me giving back,” he said.
 
When speaking of Rotary, Moorman said the fact that Rotary is a service organization is the main reason why he is so active and it’s in the various things he’s been able to do in the community through Rotary initiatives that keep him coming back.
 
In fact, Moorman’s Rotary journey has a comeback story in it. He first became a member in 1997, when he was a managing director of Jubilee Theatre, located in downtown Fort Worth. His work as a community liaison led him to Rotary where he could meet people who could help support and promote the season.
“Jim Austin, who has introduced a lot of people to the Rotary Club of Fort Worth, was my sponsor the first time I came in,” Moorman said. “However, I was only a member for a couple of years because typically the company that you work for pays for your membership. A couple years later, I left Jubilee and came to [work for] the City of Fort Worth.”
 
Moorman’s new position with the city did not include financial support for Rotary membership. “So, it took moving around and getting some other positions within the organization until I rejoined in 2012. It has been 10 years now that I've been back,” he said.
It was Past President Fernando Costa who approached Moorman about running for the Rotary board. “He asked me, and I said yes, and so my first year, I was the secretary.”
 
Moorman was elected to the board during Past President Carlo Capua’s term in 2020-21. During that year of civil unrest, Moorman noticed Rotary was not part of the conversation.
 
However, Moorman did notice the club makeup had changed. “It was younger. It was more diverse,” he said. “Diversity in sex, race, and ideas. To me and a lot of us on the board, it was a message from the body that they saw that it was time for a new direction and new thoughts.”
 
Reaching out to individuals and businesses in the community who had never heard of Rotary and having conversations about the issues in the political climate gave Moorman one of the proudest moments. “We wanted to be a part of that conversation, so we brought groups together and talked about topics that had never been approached by Rotary.”
 
Moorman also is proud of being part of the committee that developed the Rotary Minority Business Awards (RMBA). “It was yet another effort to find a way in which Rotary members could help minority owned businesses in the community,” he said.
 
Developing these awards gives the Rotary Club of Fort Worth recognition among other Rotary clubs in the nation. Moorman said the RMBA says two things about Rotary Fort Worth:
 
1. Business owners don’t have to be Rotarians for us to recognize their worth in this community.
 
2. Rotary brings people to the table so they can have access to membership, no matter how new or how small their business.
 
“Rotary has a true spirit of service. It doesn't matter where you're from or who you are, it's about service by people of different backgrounds and vocations,” he said.