Shelia Smith Davis moves through Naples’ philanthropic circles with a decisiveness that stands out in a community of seasoned organizers. She’s often the person who answers the call first, sizes up what needs doing and redesigns the plan if she feels it can be sharper. At 61, she has the polish of a former executive and the energy of someone who has reinvented herself more than once—a woman who has built a life through grit, networks and exacting standards.
On the morning of November 19, she pulls on her purple volunteer polo, loads her car with toys and bundt cakes, and heads to NCH Healthcare System’s NICU. It’s her birthday, and she’s celebrating the same way she lives day to day: staying busy, staying useful. “I’m more concerned about everyone else today,” she says.
Part of the lineage of women who have driven the county’s safety-net work, Shelia has largely operated behind the scenes, bringing her corporate-world background and knack for structure to the organizations she supports. This month, she steps into a more public role, chairing the Women’s Foundation of Collier County’s 30th-anniversary luncheon. The milestone arrives as longtime civic leaders hand off responsibility to a new wave of residents and as nonprofits shift from social-club fundraising toward more strategic, year-round impact work.
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Photography by Anna Nguyen
sheila smith davis naples philanthropist home gallery wall
Shelia lives the way she presents: Her home is polished, controlled, precise. Yet what gets pride of place is her children’s artwork and childhood photos. “These are my prized possessions,” she says.
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Photography by Anna Nguyen
sheila smith davis naples philanthropist home gallery wall
When she agreed to chair the luncheon, Shelia built her committee entirely of former Women of Initiative honorees. “We all come from different walks of life and cast a really wide net, but the common denominator is service, giving back and wanting to do good things for other people,” she says. Rather than thinking of past and future in separate lanes, she wants to bring generations together at one table to learn from each other.
She followed a similar track into Naples’ philanthropic community, with women bringing her into the fold. Soon after she moved to town in 2002, she made friends through her children’s school, Community School of Naples. At a children’s birthday party, she met Simone Lutgert, who mentioned a project she and other leaders were fighting to bring to life: a children’s museum for Collier County. “People told us, ‘Oh, a children’s museum will never work here; we’re not Miami,’” Shelia says. “We were like, ‘We’ll see.’”
‘We’ll see.’ ‘Let’s try.’ Those refrains echo across her life. She helped push the museum’s capital campaign across the finish line by bringing Tom Golisano into the fold. He was new to town and mostly involved in giving in New York. After a few polite rejections and lunch with Shelia, Simone and then-museum director Joe Cox, Tom asked for a tour. Shelia pulled together what she needed on short notice and walked him and members of his foundation through a site that was little more than pilings. Soon after, Tom pledged a $5 million grant challenge. As far as she knows, people work with the glass they know. If someone’s cup holds eight ounces and they fill it to the brim, that may be their definition of ‘all in.’ She sees a bigger glass with more capacity, more possibility. Shelia says. “If I don’t know something, I’ll teach myself. But I always have that insatiable need to learn more.”
Photography by Anna Nguyen
sheila smith davis naples philanthropist home
“We can’t help everyone, but we can try, right? That’s what we’re doing. We’re trying.”
Much of Shelia’s wiring traces back to the women who shaped her and the workplace that later hardened her resolve. Born in Tennessee and raised in Ohio, she leaned on her extended family after losing both parents when her own children were still young. Her aunts stepped in, serving as emotional anchors for the family. They showed up without being asked, an ethic she carries when working for the unhoused senior women the foundation serves and the young women it mentors. “We can’t help everyone, but we can try, right?” she says. “That’s what we’re doing. We’re trying.”
Her early professional life layered on a different education. In the late 1980s, her first job as executive assistant to the CEO of an Ohio-based retail conglomerate dropped her into a high-pressure corporate world governed by a ‘boys’ club’ culture. She learned to absorb the pace. “It was back in the era where you couldn’t call in sick to work in fear of being fired from your job,” she says.
Those early lessons about endurance surface now when she talks with mothers in the NICU or women at The Shelter for Abused Women & Children, where Shelia has long been a patron. After separating from her first husband, she was raising two toddlers largely on her own. When the kids were ill, she would wake them in the middle of the night to run to the store for Tylenol.
Photography by Anna Nguyen
sheila smith davis naples philanthropist home
The chair of the Women’s Foundation of Collier County’s 30th-anniversary luncheon draws on her nearly two decades of experience in the corporate world and extensive philanthropic pursuits for her strategic approach to the January 23 event.
She later remarried, and together they ran his family’s Liqui-Box Corporation. Shelia started her own recruitment firm for Liqui-Box, overseeing the management of the company’s 1,200 employees. After her third child was born, she stayed home briefly before opening a children’s boutique in Ohio, a role that fed her desire to work while aligning with the rhythms of motherhood.
When that marriage struggled, she rebuilt again. “You just keep moving, keep going and keep reinventing yourself, always wanting more because you have children, and that’s what mothers do,” she says. By then, the family had moved to Naples, her older kids were in college, and her 5-year-old, Spencer, was in school. She needed something of her own—something that wasn’t just functional. She discovered ballroom dancing and went all in: driving three hours to Sarasota for daily rehearsals, spending full days in the studio, then racing home to make dinner and reset for the next day. Shelia kept up the routine through the divorce several years later, ensuring her own endeavors and her child’s needs remained priorities.
She rarely engages halfway. Once committed, she tends to steer the process, an instinct shaped by her corporate years and sharpened by years of navigating motherhood. She understands the value in taking up space. “Maybe I have an over-sense of belonging. But you know what? I don’t know any other way,” she says. She doesn’t accept mediocrity, but the standard she sets is tied to investment. And, if she’s asking something of someone, she makes sure they have what they need to deliver. For some, that precision can read as distance; others describe her as disarmingly genuine, the rare person in society circles who isn’t performing so much as controlling the variables around her.
Photography by Anna Nguyen
sheila smith davis naples philanthropist home garden
Shelia’s garden offers a quiet reprieve. The practice dates back to early lessons with her grandmother and into her late 20s, when she joined a gardening club in Ohio. Avocado, grapefruit and fig trees mix with herbs—ingredients she uses when hosting dinners.
In the NICU, she often volunteers several days a week, holding infants so nurses and parents can step away, and looks to fill gaps that can go overlooked. When she noticed how bare the space felt for families through long days, she gathered donations and worked with NCH to bring in new chairs, recliners and bassinets.
The instinct to refine, restructure and push forward is evident in how she approached leading this year’s Women’s Foundation luncheon. The event has grown dramatically in recent years, outpacing its early planning frameworks. When Shelia stepped in, she began to formalize the process. She assembled a detailed timeline documenting the past year’s work so future committees aren’t rebuilding from scratch. “It may just seem like the formatting, but it’s a business,” Shelia says.
She also shifted the event from its usual November slot to January, aligning it with peak season to increase sponsorships and attendance. By late October, the luncheon had more than doubled ticket sales, with a new location at The Ritz-Carlton Naples, Tiburón, to fit the group. At her request, this year’s arrangements by 50Fifty Creative Services will be available for purchase via a QR code to benefit the Women Lifting Women Initiative.
As she finishes the last details for the January luncheon, Shelia is already looking ahead. She has her eyes set on new work with NCH and Nicklaus, focused on expanding women’s and children’s healthcare in Collier County. “We all want to be a part of something and have a sense of belonging,” she says.