Ward’s Marine Electric, The Wards Way, and the Quiet Power Behind South Florida’s Blue Economy
- Yachting International Radio
- Jul 4
- 8 min read
In South Florida, the marine industry is not simply an industry. It is a culture, a geography, a workforce, a network of family businesses, shipyards, captains, tradespeople, innovators, and waterfront infrastructure that has shaped the identity of Fort Lauderdale for generations.
To understand the blue economy here, you cannot only look to the newest technology, the latest research, or the next start-up promising disruption. You also have to look at the companies that have been quietly holding the industry together long before “blue economy” became a phrase people used in conference rooms.
Ward’s Marine Electric is one of those companies.
Founded in 1950, Ward’s has grown alongside Fort Lauderdale’s marine sector for 75 years, becoming part of the working infrastructure that allows boats, businesses, and people to keep moving. Its history is woven into the rise of South Florida as one of the world’s most important marine service, refit, and yachting centres. It is a story of electrical systems and shore power, yes, but also of trust, service, leadership, and responsibility.
At the centre of that modern story is Kristina Hebert, President/CEO of Ward’s Marine Electric and host of The Wards Way Podcast. Her role carries more than a title. It carries the responsibility of a third-generation leader guiding a legacy business through a changing marine landscape while helping preserve the stories, relationships, and working infrastructure that made South Florida’s marine industry what it is.
This is not nostalgia.
It is stewardship.
A Legacy Built Into the Waterfront
Ward’s Marine Electric began with Ward Eshleman Sr., whose electrical and generator experience after military service became the foundation for a business built around boats. In the 1950s, Fort Lauderdale was not yet the global marine hub it is today. The city was still finding its maritime identity. The infrastructure that modern yacht service now depends upon was still being imagined, argued for, and built.
By the 1960s, Ward’s was part of the effort to bring dockside power pedestals to Fort Lauderdale, helping to create the conditions that allowed vessels to stay, service, and grow within the region. It is easy, decades later, to take shore power for granted. Yet these are the kinds of practical advances that make an industry possible.
The blue economy is often described in sweeping terms, but at its core it depends on functional places and reliable systems. It depends on docks, yards, power, skilled trades, equipment, supply chains, service companies, and waterfront access. Without that foundation, innovation has nowhere to land.
Ward’s Marine Electric belongs to that foundation.
The Leadership of Showing Up
What makes Kristina Hebert’s perspective so important is that she does not speak about industry leadership as a branding exercise. She speaks about it as a responsibility.
That responsibility was passed down through generations. Her grandfather built the company. Her father joined the business in 1972 and continued its growth. Today, as the third generation leading Ward’s, Hebert is also watching the fourth generation begin to step into the story.
There is weight in that. Not the sentimental kind, but the practical kind. When a company has been part of an industry for 75 years, it accumulates more than customers. It accumulates memory. It understands patterns, pressure points, relationships, and the consequences of decisions made by people who may not fully understand how the marine sector works on the ground.
The Wards Way as More Than a Company Ethos
The phrase “The Wards Way” could easily sound like internal company language. In practice, it means something larger.
It is about service. It is about doing the work properly. It is about relationships built over time. It is about understanding that if your livelihood comes from an industry, you have an obligation to serve that industry beyond your own walls.
That mindset has shaped Ward’s involvement in associations, boards, education, policy conversations, and community service. It has also shaped The Wards Way Podcast, which began as part of the company’s 75th anniversary and has grown into a platform for preserving the people and stories behind South Florida’s marine sector.
The podcast is not simply a marketing extension. At its best, it is a record of institutional memory. It captures the voices of those who built businesses, led organisations, navigated change, and helped shape the marine industry into what it is today.
For a sector that often moves quickly and relies heavily on relationships, that kind of documentation matters. If an industry does not preserve its own story, someone else will tell it incompletely, or not at all.
Why Media Matters in the Marine Industry
The Wards Way Podcast has been recognised by the Marine Industries Association of South Florida, but its importance goes beyond an award.
It represents a shift in how legacy businesses can use media. Not to perform, but to inform. Not to chase attention, but to create context. Not to replace the work, but to make the work more visible.
The marine industry has long had parts of itself hidden from public view. People see the boats. They see the waterfront lifestyle. They see the glamour when it suits a headline. What they often do not see are the electricians, engineers, marina operators, policy advocates, contractors, yard teams, surveyors, technicians, suppliers, and family businesses that make the entire ecosystem function.
That invisibility has consequences.
When the public misunderstands the industry, policy can suffer. When policy makers misunderstand the industry, regulations can create unintended consequences. When younger generations do not understand the depth of opportunity within marine trades and marine business, workforce pipelines suffer. When misinformation spreads on the docks, decisions become reactive rather than informed.
Media, used properly, becomes more than promotion. It becomes communication infrastructure.
The Blue Economy Needs Practical Voices
The blue economy cannot live only in research papers, grant proposals, conference panels, or strategy documents.
At some point, every idea has to meet the dock.
That is why voices like Kristina Hebert’s matter. Ward’s Marine Electric represents the practical, operational side of the marine economy: the side that understands infrastructure, service, regulation, workforce pressures, customer expectations, and what it takes to keep vessels moving.
Organisations such as the Marine Research Hub of South Florida play an important role in connecting ocean innovation, sustainability, research, and economic growth. But for that work to create real impact, it has to connect with the businesses and people who know how the waterfront actually functions.
Research that sits on a shelf does not change anything.
Innovation needs a path into practice. It needs collaboration between researchers, businesses, associations, policy makers, educators, and those who understand the marine industry from experience rather than theory.
That is where legacy businesses become critical. They are not obstacles to innovation. When engaged properly, they become the bridge that helps innovation become useful.
Working Waterfronts Are Not Optional
One of the strongest themes in the conversation is the importance of working waterfronts.
It is a simple truth, but one that is often ignored: boats need places to go. They need places to be powered, repaired, stored, serviced, inspected, lifted, and maintained. The marine industry cannot exist if every waterfront is converted into private residential space with no room left for the work that supports the water.
South Florida’s blue economy depends on access to the waterfront, but not just as scenery. It depends on waterfronts that work.
That means protecting the yards, docks, marinas, service corridors, and industrial marine spaces that make boating and yachting possible. It means understanding that a healthy marine economy is not built on image alone. It is built on skilled labour, infrastructure, logistics, and the physical spaces where those things can happen.
Ward’s Marine Electric has grown by following that reality. From Fort Lauderdale to Riviera Beach, Puerto Rico, and Savannah, the company’s expansion reflects where the work is, where vessels need support, and where service must be delivered with consistency.
That is not abstract growth. It is operational intelligence.
Policy, Misinformation, and Industry Responsibility
Hebert also speaks to one of the less glamorous but most important aspects of marine leadership: policy.
Marine businesses are often affected by rules written for broader sectors. The people writing those rules may not understand the details of boatbuilding, yacht service, crew movement, refit operations, marina infrastructure, or the economic chain behind the waterfront. That does not mean they are acting in bad faith. It means the industry has a responsibility to show up and explain itself clearly.
Silence is not neutral. If the marine industry does not participate in policy conversations, decisions will still be made. They simply may be made without the context needed to avoid damage.
The same is true of misinformation. Whether the subject is regulation, crew visas, business requirements, or public perception, misinformation spreads quickly when reliable voices are absent. Hebert’s approach is direct: bring people to the right information, create places where questions can be answered, and use platforms like The Wards Way Podcast to widen understanding.
That is leadership. Not loud leadership. Not performative leadership. Useful leadership.
A Woman Leading With Substance in a Legacy Industry
There is also something important in the way Kristina Hebert occupies space in this conversation.
The marine industry has not always made it easy for women to lead visibly, particularly in technical, operational, and legacy business environments. Hebert’s presence as President/CEO of Ward’s Marine Electric is significant not because she is a woman placed neatly into a diversity headline, but because she is a serious industry leader with deep context, inherited responsibility, and her own clear vision for what the company and the wider sector need next.
She does not speak as someone trying to prove she belongs. She speaks as someone who has done the work, stayed the course, built the relationships, and understands the industry from the inside.
That distinction matters.
Representation is important, but competence is what makes it resonate. Hebert’s leadership carries both.
Where Legacy Meets the Future
The most compelling part of this story is the way it refuses to separate past and future.
Ward’s Marine Electric is a 75-year-old company, but its relevance is not confined to what it has already done. Its value lies in how that history informs what comes next. The same company that helped shape the practical infrastructure of Fort Lauderdale’s marine growth is now part of conversations about media, policy, education, working waterfronts, research, and the future of the blue economy.
That is what strong legacy businesses do. They do not merely preserve the past. They translate it.
They help the next generation understand what was built, why it matters, and what must be protected or changed to keep the industry strong.
In that sense, The Wards Way is not simply a family story. It is a marine industry story. It is about how businesses endure, how knowledge is passed down, how leadership evolves, and how responsibility grows when a company becomes part of the fabric of a place.
The Blue Economy Is Built by Those Who Understand the Work
The future of the blue economy will not be built by theory alone.
It will be built by people who understand the water, the boats, the infrastructure, the businesses, the regulations, and the workforce. It will be built by researchers willing to work with industry, and by industry leaders willing to engage with research. It will be built by those who protect working waterfronts, train skilled trades, challenge misinformation, and sit at the policy table before decisions are made without them.
Ward’s Marine Electric represents that kind of grounded leadership.
And Kristina Hebert’s voice in this conversation is a reminder that some of the most important people shaping the future of the marine industry are not always the loudest. They are the ones who have been showing up for years, doing the work, serving the industry, preserving its stories, and making sure the next generation inherits more than a name.
They inherit a responsibility.
That is the real Wards Way.
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