Commissioner McDaniel  

Collier County District 5 

William L. McDaniel, Jr. was born in Franklin, Penn., on March 25, 1961, the eldest of three children. His mother, brother (a retired Marine Corps staff sergeant) and sister still live in the Franklin area. A 1979 graduate of Rocky Grove High School, William enrolled at Clarion State University, where he majored in accounting and computer programming with a minor in economics. To pay for college, William worked as a carpenter. A job building a stable (Naples Therapeutic Riding Center) brought him to Naples in 1981, and he has lived in the area ever since. After moving to Naples, William became a licensed real estate salesperson and, in 1985, he became a licensed Realtor. He founded the Realty Company in 1987, which he manages today, focusing on the sale, management, and development of real estate in Southwest Florida. In 1998, he founded Big Island Excavating, Inc., a mining company with an office located in District 5 in eastern Collier County. The company, which William manages today, has operated mines in four Southwest Florida counties (Collier, Lee, Hendry, and Charlotte). In 1999, William was a founding director of Marine National Bank. When the company was bought by Old Florida Bank in 2003, William was selected to represent the shareholders and to serve on the new board of Old Florida Bank, until its sale in 2007 to the Bank of Florida. William currently owns and operates Lazy Springs Recreational Park and employs more than 30 people. Among his civic activities, William is currently the chairman of the Strategic Planning Committee of Goodwill of Southwest Florida and has served on the Board of Directors of that organization since 1998. He is founder of and the current president of the Corkscrew Island Neighborhood Association. From 2007 until early 2009, he served as the chairman of the Board of County Commissioners-appointed East of 951 Horizon Study Committee. He also served for two years on the Board of County Commissioners-appointed Rural Lands Stewardship Overlay Review Committee. In 2013, he was appointed by Gov. Rick Scott to the Collier County Housing Authority and served on that Authority until his election as Collier County Commissioner on November 8, 2016. He was re-elected to the Board of County Commissioners on November 3, 2020. William has two children: Kelley Marie, a 25-year-old graduate of Florida Gulf Coast University, and William III, who is a 21-year-old carpenter/contractor. In their free time, the family enjoys outdoor activities like hunting, fishing, and boating.

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Jenna Buzzacco-Foerster

Gravina, Smith, Matte & Arnold Marketing and Public Relations

Jenna Buzzacco-Foerster is an award-winning political reporter turned public affairs professional, who currently serves as the public affairs director at Gravina, Smith, Matte & Arnold Marketing and Public Relations. Prior to joining GSMA, she served as the director of government relations at the Greater Naples Chamber. There, she helped advance the chamber’s governmental and legislative priorities at the city, county and state levels. She also managed the successful One Collier campaign, which, in 2018, supported the passage of a one-cent infrastructure sales surtax in Collier County.

Jenna graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, with a degree in journalism. After college, she spent more than a decade covering local and state government and politics, for the Naples Daily News and then Florida Politics.

Jenna currently serves as the board secretary and a founding board member of the Collier County Community Land Trust and is a member of the Women’s Foundation of Collier County Board of Directors. In 2020, she was named a 40 Under 40 honoree by Gulfshore Business.

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Heidi Cramer

Florida Small Business Development Center at FGCU

Heidi Cramer is a technology and go-to-market executive with more than 38 years of experience building, scaling, and leading revenue organizations - from Global 100 corporations, including SoftBank and T-Mobile, to private-equity-backed companies and start-ups. Across those roles, she designed sales structures and channel programs and launched new products and geographic markets generating more than $2 billion in annualized revenue, while directing teams of up to 2,400 people and managing budgets approaching $1 billion. Heidi's hallmark is turning technology, culture, and commercial strategy into results. As a chief revenue officer, she rebuilt underperforming sales organizations into winning ones - cutting revenue-generation costs in half while growing strategic product revenue more than 400% in ten months - and over her career has turned around twelve markets from last in the organization to first, averaging 90 days per turnaround. Her technical and commercial career includes a series of firsts: leading the first global IP-based network installations for Jones Lang LaSalle and Northern Trust; building the first digital provisioning systems, and the teams that ran them, for every RBOC and long-distance carrier in 1996; heading IoT development beginning in 2012, including global tracking and accountability programs, the first IoT-enabled overseas shipping, and early manufacturing camera designs for robotics; and opening the global systems integrator market for a private-equity-backed enterprise software company, winning contracts and solution integrations with HCLTech, Wipro, IBM, and Tata Consultancy Services. Across each achievement, she matched the right people, technology, channels, and market around a clearly defined culture and measurable business outcome. Today, Heidi is a Business Consultant with the Florida SBDC at Florida Gulf Coast University's Lutgert College of Business, where she advises small and mid-sized businesses across Southwest Florida on strategy, growth, and organizational structure. Through SBDC and privately, she speaks to global audiences and advises leadership teams on practical AI adoption, workflow automation, go-to-market strategy, leadership, and organizational change. Her work connects emerging technology to measurable business outcomes, helping organizations move from experimentation to disciplined implementation. Heidi holds an MBA in Information Systems and Operations Management from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, a Business Analytics certificate from Harvard, and is a doctoral candidate at FGCU. She speaks and facilitates for organizations including the Florida Bar, the Florida Library Association, the Common Ground Alliance (CGA), the Community Associations Institute (CAI), and the Greater Naples Chamber. Her industry recognition includes Channel Woman of the Year and nine President's Club honors. She is based in Naples, Florida.

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