Neil Manimala is the son of immigrants who both worked in healthcare. His mother was a nurse and his father a respiratory therapist, and they worked opposite hospital shifts to raise their family in Valrico.

Neil graduated from Hillsborough County public schools and earned his undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of South Florida.
Today Neil is a board-certified urologist caring for patients across Brandon, Riverview, Plant City, and Sun City Center. He serves as the 123rd President of the Hillsborough County Medical Association, and he has served the county on the Health Care Advisory Board and the Health Council of West Central Florida.

In the clinic, Neil never asks his patients who they voted for. He asks where it hurts. And year after year, he hears the same answers. Patients skip medication to afford groceries. Families lose homes to floods that better planning would have prevented. Parents put off their own care to cover childcare. Neil became a doctor to keep people healthy, and he watched broken politics undo that work.
So he is doing what doctors do. He examines the problem, finds the cause, and treats it, and he follows up until it is fixed. That is not politics as usual. That is how a healer works.

Neil and his wife Rachel, a nurse, live here with their baby daughter Mariam and their rescue dog Benji. They are parishioners at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. As a new father, Neil is running to build a county where families can afford to stay, seniors can age with dignity, and the next generation can put down roots and thrive.