It’s not just an opportunity to network with the best and brightest young business leaders in Southwest Florida — the 2025 NextGen series continues this month with another business leader sharing wit, wisdom and insights for an exclusive audience eager to learn from the executives’ experiences.

NextGen founder Michael Benson, CEO of Naples-based financial services firm Benson Blackburn, said he started the series in 2013 almost by accident; after he asked his friend and client Richard Schulze, founder of Best Buy, to offer professional insights to the Benson Blackburn team.

“He went on for two hours telling the stories — all the successes, the failures, the tough times, the good times,” Benson recalled. “And as I’m listening to him, my mouth is dropping open. I was actually learning. After 40, 45 years in business, I was actually learning.”

Convinced that the Naples business community could benefit from the stories of the numerous current and former Fortune 500 CEOs who call the area home, Benson asked Schulze to be the first speaker in what would become the NextGen series.

In formulating the series, Benson put the focus on four key areas of interest: leadership, mentorship, empowerment and philanthropy, with each event culminating in the presentation of a $5,000 check in the speaker’s honor to a local nonprofit.

Benson asks each speaker to highlight not just the successes they’ve enjoyed, but also the challenges and setbacks, and said he has continued to learn along with the audience with each presentation.

“What I really learned was that these people who are accomplished had just tremendous perseverance,” Benson says. “There wasn’t anything that was going to stop them from getting to where they wanted to go. And they all, or most of them, had setbacks, and some very significant setbacks. So, perseverance was something that I learned from them.”

Lessons in determination

The NextGen speaker in March, Francis Rooney, knows a lot about perseverance, coming from the family who founded Manhattan Construction company in 1896, as well as Rooney Holdings Inc. in 1984.

Francis Rooney

Rooney, who definitely qualifies as a “multihyphenate” — businessman-politician-diplomat-philanthropist — served as CEO and president at Rooney Holdings from 1984 to 2016 and currently serves as chair. He also represented Florida’s 19th congressional district from 2017 to 2021, and on the diplomatic front, served as ambassador to the Holy See from 2005 to 2008 under President George W. Bush. And when it comes to philanthropy, Rooney and his wife, Kathleen, have given more than $25 million to Naples Comprehensive Health to establish the Rooney Heart Institute.

So how does someone who has worn so many hats so well decide what to talk about to a room full of people eager to hear his story?

Rooney said he will focus mostly on the business side of his career: “building up the construction company and some other companies … and then maybe a little bit about politics, because one of my pet peeves is that there aren’t enough businesspeople in politics.”

On the business front, Rooney represents the fourth generation to lead Manhattan Construction, one of the nation’s largest privately held construction services companies.

He said Manhattan has had “four good construction leaders” — including his son, Larry, the fifth generation to head the company — and one bad one, his father. Upon his father’s death, Rooney bought the struggling company from his family.

“I told my mother, ‘You do not need to own a broke construction company,’” he said. “And so, I bought them out and one thing led to another, and we rebuilt. It took a long time … we couldn’t afford any problems; we had to make money on every job back then.”

During his time in Congress, Rooney developed a reputation for a bipartisan approach, especially when it came to funding for the Everglades restoration project he championed. He said he would tell young business leaders how important it is to see the other person’s point of view. “We’ve got to get back to some kind of ability to accept the other side’s opinion and then figure out a way for each party to get enough of what they want.”

The 2025 series concludes in April with David MacLennan, former Cargill Inc. CEO and executive board chair. NextGen series ticket applications can be found at nextgennaples.com.