Women Who Make Southwest Florida

"The best advice I ever received was just be who you are."

For the past 13 years, Susan Bridges has been the creative force behind the Center for the Arts of Bonita Springs. During her tenure as president, she has overseen a significant capital campaign, the design of new programs, the opening of new buildings (debt-free) on a 10-acre campus and a skyrocketing growth in membership from 300 to nearly 1,700.   The Center also now operates over 140 summer camps for kids, most on scholarships, creating equal opportunity for all kids to be creative. She has accomplished all of this with one thing in mind, “To know that if there’s any person out there who wants the arts, regardless of economic ability, the arts are there for them.  That’s pretty special.”

“What I’d like to leave behind is a creative spirit. To be seen as a person who led the way for others to think differently.”

From a small all-girls college in Philadelphia to the University of Virginia at Charlottesville to 5th Avenue in Naples, Andrea Clark Brown has held onto her creative spirit, her positive attitude and her desire to bring joy to others.

“Classical music is dying and it’s really scary. It is my mission to get more young people interested in classical music.”

When she was five years old, Reiko Niiya’s mother put a violin in her hands because in her family all the women played either the violin or the piano.  Her mother’s plan: study violin, go to the best music schools available and then move from her native Japan to America and become a violinist. In a nutshell, that is what Niiya did. For the past 30 years, she has enriched the cultural life of Southwest Florida as the concertmaster for the Southwest Florida Symphony Orchestra.

  "I believe that being successful is something we measure from inside. Have I made a difference?  Have I accomplished a goal? I think moving forward is success."

Taking risks has defined Samira Beckwith’s life.  Her parents risked everything in the 1950s to leave Lebanon with three small children and settle in the United States. While at The Ohio State University earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree, Beckwith was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease and underwent new treatments to thwart off its potential prognosis.  Her personal health care experience set her on a course “to change the health care system for people with serious illness.”

"I would like my legacy to be that I served God, my family and my community well."

In the late 1960s Lalai Hamric  had a child to support and needed job. She landed a job as a clerk at what was then known as the Migrant Health Services.  In 2009, she retired as president and CEO of Family Health Centers of Southwest Florida and a lifetime career of providing medical care for low-income families. Edward R. Murrow's documentary, Harvest of Shame, stirred the U.S. Congress to enact legislation making funds available for family health centers and Hamric was named the head of the Family Health Centers of Southwest Florida. Under her leadership the organization grew from three small outreach clinics in Lee County to sixteen medical offices and six dental offices, including  OB/GYN, pediatric and adult/ family medicine with outreach to five counties. “My proudest achievement,” says Hamric, “was to watch how Family Services grew.”