Ave Maria University Career Fair
February 20, 2019
10 p.m. -5 p.m.
Cost: $55

AMU has over 400 students at the junior and senior levels. They represent 30+ majors and look forward to connecting with you for internships, graduate students, and employment opportunities. Lunch will be provided for each guest. In addition to a traditional career fair model, AMU is offering ½ hour time slots to speak about your business and your industry to groups. Register now. Space is limited.

Arts and culture are key for any growing community, large or small. Artis—Naples, Gulfshore Playhouse and the United Arts Council of Collier County are leading the way in our community.  At the Chamber's first Wake Up Naples session of 2019, Kathleen van Bergen, CEO & President of Artis-Naples, Kristen Coury, Founder & Producing Artistic Director of Gulfshore Playhouse and Laura Burns, Executive Director of United Arts Council gave us insight into the current state of arts and culture in Naples and what’s to come for the future. 

Here are 10 takeaways from the talk:
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1. Artis—Naples, the home of the Naples Philharmonic and the Baker Museum, is making the arts more accessible to everyone in the community through world class education programs.
2. Only 50% of Artis—Naples’ revenue every year comes from ticket sales, donors are a huge part of their continued growth.
3. The Baker Museum will expand to 17,000 square feet in the upcoming year to hold more works of art!
4. Gulfshore Playhouse has six full length runs of professional theatre, including new works and reinvented classics
5. Gulfshore Playhouse brings in over 100 artists a year to Naples from all over the country, including some from Broadway.
6. A contest in the form of a festival, hosted by Gulfshore Playhouse, is held every year for new theater productions as a chance to introduce new works to the community.
7. In Downtown Naples, Gulfshore Playhouse is constructing a new theatre that will hold a stage the size of Broadway.
8. The United Arts Council of Collier County is a grassroots advocate for arts and culture within the community and acts as an umbrella for many different forms of art.
9. The United Arts Council of Collier County provides arts and culture after-school enrichment programs directly to the students, making it easily accessible and convenient for our future talent.
10. The United Arts Council pours into the local arts community with hopes of kids exploring the world, learning, and then coming back to Naples to live and work.​

Wake Up Naples is a monthly breakfast event includes dynamic speakers and valuable networking opportunities.  Make sure to keep an eye out for future events! 

NAPLES, FL (Jan. 11, 2019) – The Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce and the Board of Collier County Commissioners selected Waterside Shops as the Business of the Month for January 2019.
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Each month, the award is presented to an organization that has enhanced the community through financial, volunteer and active involvement in organizations and programs that assist in creating a better quality of life for all citizens in Collier County.

The Board of Collier County Commissioners and Bethany Sawyer, the director of membership at The Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce, presented Anne Fleming, general manager, with a commemorative plaque at the Jan. 8, 2019 County Commission meeting.

Founded in 1992, Waterside Shops is the Gulf Coast's premier shopping and dining destination where the finest names in luxury retail and fashionable lifestyle stores are set amid a lush landscape of 30,000 tropical plants and flowering shrubs, a 550-foot-long, hand-laid rock wall punctuated by cascading water, and dramatic lightning features.
Waterside has helped raise over $300,000 annually for local nonprofits that support children, education, healthcare, and the arts including Golisano Children’s Museum, Naples Children & Education Foundation, Guadalupe Center, Baby Basics, Artis – Naples, STARability Foundation, AVOW Hospice, Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, and Champions for Learning.

Most recently, Waterside donated $25,000 to the Women’s Foundation of Collier County and $20,000 to United Way through their 25th Anniversary Shopping Days – their largest donations to date.
Each year, Waterside hosts a student fashion show featuring student models dressed head-to-toe in the latest fashions. Through this event, Waterside donates over $40,000 annually to The Community School of Naples Financial Aid Program.

Waterside Shops also hosts a Halloween celebration that benefits Golisano Children’s Museum of Naples and their efforts to support children now and into the future. Last year, they donated over $5,000 to the Children’s Museum. 
Additionally, the coins in the fountains at Waterside are donated to alternating charities. These coins have benefited Baby Basics, The Shelter for Abused Women & Children, The Conservancy of Southwest Florida, Avow Hospice, and many others. $10,000 is donated annually as a result of Coins for a Cause.

Recruitment is now underway for our local businesses to participate in the Collier County Public School Internship program for NAF Academy students.

Internships are work-based learning opportunities that allow students to gain industry specific experience based upon their chosen field of study while enthusiastically supporting company needs and goals. 

NAF Academies are small learning communities within current school structures focused on preparing students for college and career success. NAF students participate in career awareness, career exploration and career preparation activities which allows them to apply their knowledge in the workplace in order to benefit you and your organization. 

This year the Leadership Collier Foundation, an affiliate of the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce, will be placing students from the following career pathways: 

• Engineering 
• Information Technology 
• Finance 
• ​Hospitality & Tourism 
• Health Sciences 
• Aviation 

We're looking for a variety of internships for our students, including those in the medical fields, engineering, product design, visual arts, computer programming, marketing, audio/video production, working with animals, social services, and many other careers. You'll be helping our students AND helping your business by tapping into this excellent source of energetic young talent! 

An NAF Academy Internship must meet the following: 

1. Hands-on learning - Internships combine hands-on learning and skills development with real-world work experience under the guidance and supervision of supportive adults, who are not a student’s teacher. 
2. A fair exchange - An internship is a work/learn exchange between a student and your business. Students are meant to work and learn. (80% meaningful, industry specific work).
3. Student commitment – Students must work a minimum of 120 hours.
4. Investment – Interns will need to be paid at minimum, the minimum wage rate of $8.46/hour ($1,015.20 total).
5. Financial assistance to support your intern(s), through a CCPS/AT&T grant, is available to companies/organizations who qualify (*The program provides liability insurance for all interns through CCPS Accident insurance policy).
6. Students will be 16 years or older 

To see if your business is a good fit for this program, please contact Alex Breault at alex@napleschamber.org or by phone at (239) 403.2912. ​

At the Chamber we frequently get asked by our business community how interns are beneficial to their company. Not only do these opportunities engage, prepare and retain our local talent, interns instantly add value to the culture, perspective and productivity of any organization.

But don't just take it from us! Hear how beneficial an intern can be first-hand from Lindsay Pursglove, PhD, MBA, Owner-Operator of Swimtastic Swim Schools of SW Florida.

1. Who was your intern and how was the overall experience? 
Ruth-Ann Baker, a student at Gulf Coast High School, joined Swimtastic this past summer and she was the best addition to our squad. Ruth was professional from day one in her interview; she has been coach-able and is always willing to help. As an intern she went through all the training and requirements of any Swimtastic employee and she excelled at every task given to her. She made a connection with our staff, swim families, and due to her dedication to her swim students she has accepted to stay on with us as a swim instructor. 

2. What do you suggest other companies understand when hiring an intern?
We worked together to understand Ruth’s goals and cater her experience. Together our team exposed her to opportunities that will help her now and into the future. So many young students do not necessarily realize how many career opportunities are out there. It was great to see Ruth learn about the aquatics industry in sport management, and to see her thrive as she is learning how to be a lifeguard and swim instructor.

Senator Garrett Richter (LC '93)
“The most powerful leadership tool you have is your own personal example,” said John Wooden, head basketball coach at the University of California, Los Angeles.
 
Garrett Richter, former state legislator and President Pro Tempore of the Florida Senate from 2012 to 2016, brings this powerful tool to the table every day as he exemplifies leadership in our community. Richter has used his own personal example to great effect throughout his careers in banking and politics—and that example has had a profound ripple impact here in Southwest Florida, setting a model for others to follow.
 
Twenty Six years after graduating from Leadership Collier, Richter remains an active leader within the organization, speaking with each of our leadership programs and sharing his wisdom through LCF alumni opportunities like the Leadership Lunch Series and Campaign for Leadership. Richter is an alumnus and past Board of Regents member for Leadership Florida and past chairman of Leadership Collier. He is also a board member of the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce.
 
Richter says “the building of long-lasting, value-driven relationships” was his favorite part of the program back in ‘93.
 
“Those relationships that I established in Leadership Collier years ago are still a very meaningful part of my life,” Richter said. “I was able to make friends with people, and while we might not agree on public policy issues, we agree on our mutual respect of each other.”
 
Richter continues to model that mutual respect as the chairman of the Chamber’s Public Policy Committee, where he expertly guides a group of community leaders to address some of the most significant issues—including infrastructure, mental health care, workforce development and affordable housing—facing Southwest Florida.
 
“For some of the biggest issues, we crossed a starting line with the passing of the 1% sales tax,” Richter said. Beyond members of the Public Policy Committee, Richter sees opportunity in these challenges for all LCF alumni to make a difference.
 
“Affordable housing and workforce development have numerous solutions, and there is always room at the table for leaders to develop those solutions.”
 
For Richter, Leadership Collier contributed to another important part of his leadership development—something he calls “Learn, Earn, and Return.”
 
“Leadership Collier enabled me to accomplish two of those ingredients: learning and returning,” Richter said. “I learned more about our community, about the policy, what drives our policy.”
 
The experience created a “foundation of awareness and convinced me to run for public office after Dudley Goodlette termed out of the legislature.”
 
Richter often shares this key advice to anyone who is thinking about running for public office. In his experience, there are two reasons most people run: Because they want to be something or because they want to do something.
“Thanks to Leadership Collier, I had a better ability to decide that I wanted to do something,” Richter said.
 
Now, the Vietnam veteran is helping others to do something, too.
 
“We live in a dynamic age, things are always changing, the demographics of our population are always changing. As people slow down in their service, we need the younger demographic to come in and take the reins and get involved,” Richter said. “Our community is such a vibrant community, and the only way to get fresh ideas is to have fresh people at the table.”
 
Senator Richter, thank you for using your own personal example to create a strong leadership model, based on a foundation of impeccable integrity, for us to follow. We are grateful for your service to LCF, our community, and the state of Florida. ​