There are mornings when a community gathers for breakfast, and there are mornings when a community gathers for something far more sacred — the kind of moment that reminds you why you ever started in the first place. For the Comegys Insurance Agency family, this morning was the second kind.

Today, Comegys hosted a table of eight at the 15th Annual Champions for ACT Breakfast at USF in downtown St. Petersburg. From the outside, it looked like another beautiful event: linen tablecloths, the warm hum of conversation, students preparing to take the stage. But for those who know the story behind the story, this gathering carried fifteen years of weight, of belief, and of a quiet, persistent kind of love for the next generation.

Long before ACT — the Arts Conservatory for Teens — became the powerhouse it is today, it was just an idea in the heart of Dr. Alex Harris. A singer, a songwriter, a Georgia-rooted dreamer who had seen too many gifted young people in St. Petersburg’s underserved neighborhoods slip through the cracks. Alex believed the arts could be a lifeline. A way to educate, empower, and enrich teens who deserved a stage as bright as their potential.

But every founder needs believers — the kind of people who say yes before there is a building, before there is a budget, before anyone outside the room understands what is being built. Derek Berset, of Comegys Insurance Agency, was one of those first believers. Not just a sponsor. Not just a supporter. Derek served as the very first President of ACT, helping shape the organization in its earliest, most fragile days, when it was still more vision than reality.

And standing right behind Derek from day one were his parents — Mark Berset, CEO of Comegys, and Linda Berset, President of Comegys. Two leaders who don’t just run a family business; they steward a family legacy. They didn’t just nod politely at their son’s big idea. They rolled up the sleeves of the company they lead together and said, let’s go. What started as one Berset’s belief in a founder’s vision has, over fifteen years, become a family heirloom of generosity — handed down from parents to son and now reaching the next generation.

That is what makes today so remarkable. Fifteen years later, the Bersets and the Comegys team weren’t just attending a breakfast. They were watching the seed they helped plant blossom into a shade tree that now shelters hundreds of young people across the Tampa Bay area.

Belief is one thing. Sustained belief is another. For the past five years, Mark and Linda Berset, together with the rest of the Berset family, have funded a scholarship through ACT — quietly, faithfully, without fanfare. This year, two extraordinary young artists each received $2,500 Berset Family Scholarships:

Jayla Stubbins and Makena Kovacs.

Two names that, by morning’s end, would be etched into the memory of everyone at the Comegys table — but for reasons no one in that room could have predicted when they sat down.

Here is where the story turns into something you couldn’t write if you tried.

Before the program even began, before the speeches, before the scholarship recipients were announced, Mark Berset, CEO of Comegys, was walking through the venue when a piece of student artwork stopped him in his tracks. It was a painting of a sweet, cuddly bear — and his mind went immediately to his and Linda’s granddaughter, who lights up at anything with cute bears. He could already picture her face when she saw it. He bought it on the spot. Not as a sponsor, not as a board member, not as the father of the man who helped found this whole thing — just as a grandfather who knew this would make a little girl smile.

No name. No story. Just the work itself, and a grandfather’s heart, speaking loud enough to make him reach for his wallet.

Then the program started.
Then the scholarship recipients were announced.
Then Jayla Stubbins walked to the front of the room.

The painting he had just purchased — purely on instinct, purely on the strength of what his eye and heart told him — was hers.

Take a breath and let that land. The CEO of Comegys — proud father of one of ACT’s co-founders, partner in business and in life to the company’s President — walked into the very organization his son helped build fifteen years ago and, without knowing it, used his own dollars to invest in one of its students. Twice. Once through a scholarship he and Linda had quietly funded with the family for years running. And once, accidentally and beautifully, by being moved by her art before he ever knew her name — moved enough that he wanted to bring it home to the granddaughter he and Linda share.

Three generations of Bersets, all touched by one painting, all pulled into the same circle of grace, on the same Thursday morning.

That is not a coincidence. That is what happens when a vision is allowed to grow for fifteen years. That is what Alex Harris was building toward all along — a community where the people who write the checks and the people who pick up the brushes are not separated by walls, but woven into the same story.

It is what ACT is all about.

Comegys Insurance Agency has been there since the beginning — not because it was convenient, not because it was good for business, but because the Berset family understood early what others have come to understand since: when you invest in a young artist, you are investing in a community’s soul. Mark and Linda believed in their son. Derek believed in Alex Harris’s vision. And now, fifteen years later, a granddaughter is about to fall in love with a bear painted by a girl her family helped lift up — without anyone planning it that way.

That is not a marketing strategy. That is what a family — and a family business led by two people who believe the same things — looks like when it puts its arms around a community and refuses to let go.

Jayla Stubbins is going to keep painting. Makena Kovacs is going to keep creating. Alex Harris is going to keep building. And somewhere in the Berset home, a little girl is going to fall in love with a sweet bear painting — never knowing, at least not yet, that it was made by a young woman her grandparents had been quietly championing for years.

That is the kind of full circle most organizations only dream of.

For Comegys and ACT, it was just a Thursday morning in St. Petersburg.

The Arts Conservatory for Teens (ACT), founded in St. Petersburg in 2012 by Dr. Alex Harris and co-founders, has impacted thousands of teens across Pinellas County and beyond through arts education, mentorship, and scholarship opportunities. Comegys Insurance Agency is proud to have stood with ACT from day one — and is even prouder to keep standing with the next Jayla, the next Makena, and every young artist still waiting to be seen.