Florida Gulf Coast University’s new Family Enterprise program is designed to prepare students to inherit, launch, manage or acquire family businesses.
Brian Tietz
Florida Gulf Coast University students are getting up close and personal with their family histories, mapping not just genealogies but the unique relationships, behaviors, health patterns and other undercurrents that flow through their families. That might sound like an exercise in sociology, psychology or medicine, but it’s mixed with creation, innovation, profit and loss — family life through the lens of an entrepreneur.
Professor William McDowell, dean of FGCU’s Daveler & Kauanui School of Entrepreneurship, led students through the genogram exercise for his class Introduction to Family Enterprise.
“We have a lot of students who recognize they’re going to be working for family-owned firms,” McDowell says. “And it’s good to know what’s going on in those situations.”
The class is part of a new course of study in Family Enterprise offered through The School of Entrepreneurship, beginning this fall as a minor for the general student body or a concentration for entrepreneurship majors. It’s aimed at students who may inherit, start up, work for or acquire a family enterprise.
“Southwest Florida has a dominant share of small businesses, which most often are family businesses,” says Michael Wynn, a third-generation leader of Sunshine Ace Hardware and past chair of FGCU’s Board of Trustees. “So, right off the bat, our future prosperity of the region is directly tied to the success of family businesses.”
Family businesses make up nearly one-third of the businesses in Lee, Collier and Charlotte counties and 26% of firms nationwide, based on a U.S. Census definition in which two or more family members own the majority of a company. But that understates family leadership in businesses. Firms in which family members have at least some control account for 87% of business tax returns and 59% of the private sector workforce, according to a report by the advocacy group Family Enterprise USA.
Family firms face unique challenges such as intergenerational collaboration and conflict, and potential succession through family members or outsiders. But many schools are not equipped to educate students in family enterprise, and fewer still through an entrepreneurial lens that emphasizes real-world experience, innovation and growth.
“The thing that really makes this unique is, it’s the first time that a family type of either minor or concentration is coming specifically from an independent school of entrepreneurship,” says Associate Dean and Professor Jason Lortie, who led development of the school’s Family Enterprise curriculum.
Well-informed entrepreneurs could be a boon for family firms as current owners look toward handing off businesses to a younger generation, said Tim Cartwright, partner of the Naples-based firm Fifth Avenue Family Office, adviser to the School of Entrepreneurship and one of the pivotal figures behind its inception.
Cartwright pointed to evidence that a large part of the country’s wealth could evaporate or stop growing if current owners don’t find capable successors. Often, a family business owner’s net worth is largely tied up in their firm, according to a study by the Exit Planning Institute; yet roughly 30% of businesses that go to market end up selling.
“What is the business owner left to do?” Cartwright asks. “He can try to sell it or shut it down. And that seems to be a shame. If there’s a business that can make it past the five-year survival rate … you want to keep that business going.”
In Family Enterprise USA’s 2026 survey, 66% of family business owners said they have not passed on ownership to the next generation due to a general lack of planning, owners’ desire to remain in control, questions about the next generation’s ability or desire to lead the business and financial challenges related to the handoff.
For students who may inherit a family business or acquire one, Entrepreneurship through Acquisition is another required course in the Family Enterprise minor that delves into the challenges inherent in that transition.
“That would be something that we hope (students) are well prepared for instead of just going at it blindly,” Lortie says. “They would have had experiential classroom time with thinking through those types of ideas and how it is that you properly do that with the best chance of success, if you go through that direction of doing it.”
Developed by Associate Dean Jason Lortie (top right, with William McDowell), FGCU’s Family Enterprise program gives students hands-on experience navigating the complexities of succession and business transitions.
Brian Tietz
Family foundations
FGCU launched the School of Entrepreneurship in 2017 under founding director Sandra Kauanui and opened its three-story permanent home, Lucas Hall, in 2021. This season, its curriculum is getting a major update for the first time with new minors that, besides Family Enterprise, include Applied Blockchain Technology, Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Creator Entrepreneurship.
The school is in a unique position to become a well-known hub for family enterprise studies due to existing staff and program supporters along with the annual Resnick-Wynn Family Business Conference. It has become a foundation for family enterprise studies since beginning five years ago, creating an ongoing tradition and a growing library of source material for students and instructors.
Its speakers have included a roster of national figures, such as Steve Forbes, Jonathan Tisch of Loews Hotels & Co. and Jim Purdue of Purdue Farms, along with local luminaries from companies, including DeAngelis Diamond and My Shower Door.
John and Billie Resnick enlisted Wynn to help organize the conferences, modeled on similar ones that the Resnicks held at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The husband-and-wife team are principals of The Resnick Group, an estate and business succession planning firm in Naples.
“We saw local family businesses in the region thriving, but not really having the support that we saw in other areas of the country,” Billie Resnick says.
When McDowell was appointed dean in 2024, he brought a background of teaching family enterprise along with expertise in entrepreneurship ecosystems.
“I’ve been teaching family for years,” McDowell says. “I work with a lot of family firms. I was here and I could help kick it off.”
As interest grows, FGCU leaders are exploring ways to expand the family enterprise program, including a four-year major, startup competitions and a regional family enterprise center.
Brian Tietz
Learning from experience
Since its inception, FGCU’s entrepreneurship school has emphasized experiential education through the real-life lessons of adjunct professors or hands-on projects over academic tomes.
As part of McDowell’s introductory course, he invites area business leaders to speak with students about the realities of intertwining family and professional lives, or as Lake Yoke puts it, the “personal aspect” of family businesses.
“I think that personal aspect is important because when you’re in a family business, everything is personal,” says Yoke, 31.
He works for Naples-based Island Piling Inc., a pile driving and foundation contractor. It was founded 40 years ago by his parents, Kena Yoke and her ex-husband Scott Yoke, who still run the business together.
Although Lake has separate ambitions, including as a competitive sport shooter and as an information systems and data analysis expert, he returned home at his parents’ request during the COVID-19 pandemic to work for the family business.
“He has really helped bring technology into the office and into what we do,” Kena says.
They each have their strengths.
“(Lake’s) father is very pen and paper,” Kena says, thriving in the field while she excels at relationship management. “I’m very ‘Rolodex and Lotus.’ He (Lake) is very ‘data and AI.’”
When Kena and Lake spoke with McDowell’s family enterprise students, they spoke frankly.
“What’s it like working with your ex-husband?” one student wants to know.
“I don’t work with my ex-husband,” she answers. “I work with my business partner and my son’s father. They’re very different roles.”
For FGCU sophomore and entrepreneurship major Forrest McDaniel, 20, the class offered a fresh perspective on how to lead a construction firm.
After growing up working different roles at McDaniel Construction, founded by his parents and their former business partner in 1999, he may end up running the company with his siblings one day.
“Going into that class was a complete change of pace,” McDaniel says, adding that he was inspired by a visit to FGCU from My Shower Door’s CEO and founder Bill Daubmann. Daubmann spoke in February at the Resnick-Wynn Conference.
“You can have a family culture and family atmosphere but still compete with the largest, most aggressive companies in the world,” McDaniel says. “That was kind of my biggest takeaway.”
If demand for the new minor proves strong, FGCU leadership will likely look toward creating a four-year major. For now, McDowell, Lortie, staff and students are considering several initiatives to incorporate into the school’s program such as a “spinoff” competition in which students create a startup using the assets of an existing family firm, and an official student family business organization. They are also considering how to organize a regional family enterprise center.
“What that looks like, I’m not sure,” McDowell says. “We’ve got the freedom to create whatever we want with that.”