In the past, Kristin Lutgert Cartwright rarely led with her maiden name—eager to keep a low profile in a region her family helped mold.
Recently, she was filming promotional material for The Lutgert Companies with her grandfather Raymond Lutgert’s Human Race sculpture at The Village Shops on Venetian Bay. A resident walking his dog stopped to tell her the story of the artist, a Naples philanthropist and developer. He praised the family for all they’ve done for the community. The monumental sculpture, at the corner of Park Shore Drive and Gulf Shore Boulevard, is a replica of the original, 25-foot stainless steel abstract piece that stands at the entrance to the Lutgert College of Business at Florida Gulf Coast University.
The family’s fingerprints are found across the region. Over the past 60 years, the Lutgerts developed neighborhoods and gathering places that steered Naples’ evolution from a sleepy beach town to a small city. Her whole life, Kristin lived alongside that legacy; now she has a hand in shaping it. Last Fall, she joined her younger brother, Erik, at the helm of The Lutgert Companies, taking on the role of chief marketing officer. Their sister, Kim Lutgert Confer, works behind the scenes, overseeing project development. “We always want to keep rooted in what our family started,” she says.
Beginning with Park Shore, which expanded development northward from the city’s historic core, and continuing through projects such as The Promenade at Bonita Bay and Mercato, the family championed growth that favored walkable gathering places, access to the water and an intimate scale. Along the way, they invested in the civic institutions that would be needed to anchor an expanding population, including NCH Naples Comprehensive Health, FGCU and Naples Winter Wine Festival.
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Photography by Omar Cruz
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Last fall, Kristin Lutgert Cartwright stepped up as the chief marketing officer for her family’s The Lutgert Companies. One of seven siblings in a blended Naples family known for major developments and philanthropic contributions, Kristin fills with pride when she hears locals praise family’s contributions. “We always want to keep rooted in what our family started,” she says.
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Kristin moved away from Naples twice, returning each time with a deeper appreciation for her hometown. In her twenties, she traveled the world as a professional wakeboarder, earning a spot in the 2020 Wakeboarding Hall of Fame for being credited as the first woman to land a whirlybird.
That impact wasn’t always obvious to Kristin. Her childhood unfolded during one of Naples’ earliest modern growth spurts, when neighborhoods were stretching northward and skyward, even while cars still pulled onto the sand along the beaches. She spent her childhood exploring the burgeoning Park Shore by bike with her siblings, weaving through the transplanted banyans that lined the streets on the way to Seagate Elementary.
She moved away for a few years with her mother and returned her senior year in high school to find the quiet beach town she once knew buzzing with excitement. She started to see that the talks about construction plans for Grey Oaks Country Club and real estate deals for Bonita Bay Club were more than family matters; they were conversations about what Southwest Florida would become.
Neither Kristin nor Erik expected to take over the family business. Both of them pursued careers in professional wakeboarding, earning spots in the Wakeboarding Hall of Fame. For the better part of a decade, they were traveling across the United States and Europe, chasing wakes in the X Games and Gravity Games while working their way through college. A gymnast with an ‘if-you-can-so-can-I’ attitude, Kristin took up the sport on boat days. At the University of Florida’s Lake Wauburg and Lake Santa Fe, she was dared to do tricks. “I’d land the flip, and everyone would go nuts,” she says. “Then, I just started riding with the guys all the time.”
After graduating, Kristin moved in with Erik and a crew of professional wakeboarders in his Orlando home. She was the first woman to land a whirlybird (a backflip with a 360-degree rotation) in a competition. Throughout her athletic career, she’d seen the overpopulated beaches with commercial businesses dotting the shores. Each time, she’d find herself thinking about her hometown, where mangroves and dunes still framed the coast.
When she started thinking about having kids, Kristin returned home in 2002. She traded her board shorts for blazers and put her business administration degree to use at The Lutgert Companies, overseeing communications for the shopping centers, including The Village Shops and The Promenade. She then broadened her experience at Premier Sotheby’s International Realty, the brokerage firm, which was once part of the family’s company.
Through it all, her father, Scott and stepmother, Simone—a driving force in establishing the Golisano Children’s Museum and a familiar presence on local fundraising committees—showed Kristin that community involvement extended beyond what they built or money donated. Today, Kristin serves as chair of the marketing committee for Women’s Foundation of Collier County and vice chair of Pace Center for Girls Collier at Immokalee.
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Philanthropy is core to the Lutgert family. Inspired by her stepmom, Simone Lutgert—a force behind Naples Winter Wine Festival—Kristin goes beyond writing a check, serving on the boards of nonprofits such as Pace Center for Girls Collier at Immokalee and the Women’s Foundation of Collier County, where she chairs the marketing committee.
While Kristin was busy raising two children and leading the new-development division at Premier, she kept the family business in mind, working on Lutgert projects on and off for nearly two decades. “I had my hands in a lot of things,” she says. Her older brother, Kurt, had helped establish Lutgert Construction in the early 2000s and was expected to lead the company into its next chapter. When he died of cancer in 2021, the loss reshaped the family’s future. “It happened so suddenly that it was like you didn’t have time to comprehend it,” Kristin says.
By last summer, her kids were away at college, her younger brother was gearing up to take on the title of president, and Kristin felt a pull. She was at her family’s mountain retreat in Linville when she found a bound book in her son’s room. Inside, the pages revealed her late brother’s manuscript for a book he was writing about his spiritual journey. “I’ve been trying to read it and absorb it,” she says. “I’m sure he’s looking over us.” A couple of months later, she decided to come back to the family business full-time, taking on the role of CMO. “A lot of people I work with now probably have known me since I was a child,” she adds.
Naples is denser than it was when Kurt started the construction division, and certainly more than it was when their grandfather forged Park Shore out of the scrub. There’s little land left to develop. While some people lament the region’s recent growth, Kristin sees it as a sign of vitality rather than decline. She points to walkable spaces, such as Fifth Avenue South, where restaurants and shops draw crowds, and Naples Design District, where institutions such as Gulfshore Playhouse enrich the cultural scene, without the big-city bustle. “You hear people saying Naples has lost its charm. I don’t think it’s lost its charm. I think it’s getting better,” she says. In her view, a community is strongest when young people have reasons to stay, allowing families to remain connected across generations and ensuring the city’s future is shaped not only by newcomers, but by people with longstanding ties.
It’s the sort of place she wants to see her kids settle down. Still, she doesn’t push them toward the family business—aside from encouraging summer work at the family’s Linville Ridge property, where her son, Noah, works golf maintenance and her daughter, Ella, assists the pastry chef. “I want them to see their dreams out,” she says, as her parents allowed her.
Kristin reflects on an essay her daughter wrote about the childhood names she made up for her great-grandfather’s artworks, displayed throughout Naples and Fort Myers. “To you, this may be Minor Tragedy,” Ella writes. “To me, it’s Lady with the Ice Cream Cone.” Like her daughter, Kristin is adding her own voice to the story that her family wrote before her—not rewriting, but adapting for an audience that’s ever changing.
Photography by Omar Cruz
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After her older brother, Kurt, passed away from cancer in 2021, Kristin stepped up alongside her younger brother, Erik, to lead the company. Her goal is to foster responsible development that encourages future generations to stay in Southwest Florida for years to come.
Shot on location at Tulia Italian Steak
Hair and Makup by Duality Artistry
Styling by Veronica Porras