SOUTHWEST FLORIDA / CONNECTION & CARE / INSPIRATION
Dawn
Belamarich
The next connection
has to work.
By Rob Urban
An adult returning to school may need help choosing a program. They may also need childcare, a way to get to class, and someone who can explain what happened to the credits they earned years ago. A scholarship can be enormously helpful while still leaving several practical questions unanswered.
That is the kind of overlap Dawn Belamarich’s work asks people to take seriously. As president and CEO of Collaboratory in Fort Myers, she leads an organization that brings philanthropy together with work on education, health, housing, and other concerns across Southwest Florida. The challenge is to help the organizations involved connect their efforts in ways residents can actually use.
It is an ambitious assignment, and an unusually apt one for someone trained in both counseling and organizational leadership. A community’s needs seldom arrive neatly separated by the department that funds them.
A person.
An organization.
Both need attention.
Belamarich’s biography with the Fort Myers Housing Authority describes a career across nonprofit and business settings, along with her qualifications as a licensed mental health counselor and clinical addiction professional in Florida. Her education includes a doctorate in business administration and leadership and master’s degrees in sociology/criminology and mental health counseling.
That combination brings two scales of attention into the same career. Counseling requires attention to an individual’s circumstances. Organizational leadership requires decisions about the structure, staffing, and resources through which many people receive help. Neither scale can stand in for the other.
The work was already underway.
The announcement of her appointment in August 2023 described her experience at Lee Health and Recovery Centers of America. She was entering an organization shaped by nearly twelve years of Sarah Owen’s leadership. Belamarich spoke about continuing the regional work already underway.
Staff members bring knowledge that predates the person arriving at the top. Taking responsibility for the next stage includes recognizing what others have built.
In 2026, Belamarich also joined the Housing Authority’s board of commissioners. Housing belongs in the same conversation as health and education because a person trying to manage either one still needs somewhere stable to live. Her public roles put her in more than one part of that conversation.
Returning with a life
already in progress.
Collaboratory’s FutureMakers Coalition works across Charlotte, Collier, Glades, Hendry, and Lee counties. Its focus extends from early learning through education and employment. That range is large, but one part of the work makes it easy to understand: helping adults return to training or finish a qualification they have already started.
The coalition’s Navigator program offers individual advising, help with enrollment and financial aid, transcript evaluation, and connections to services such as transportation and childcare. Those are the tasks that can turn a general intention to return to school into an actual first day of class.
What
still counts?
I like the inclusion of transcript evaluation. It is such a specific, unglamorous service, and potentially such an important one. Someone who has already completed coursework needs to know what still counts. Without that answer, even estimating the cost and time of returning can be difficult.
This is where the broad language of regional change becomes tangible. The person seeking help has a schedule, a budget, and prior effort they hope has not been wasted. An organization that can connect the necessary pieces makes the next step easier to see.
There is a form of respect in taking someone’s earlier effort seriously. A return to school does not erase the hours already spent there. Before asking a person to commit more time, it helps to establish what they have earned and what remains. That clearer picture can make a large decision feel possible to examine.
Enough help to continue.
Collaboratory’s current scholarship page reports 218 scholarships totaling $1,597,296 for the 2026 cycle. The awards support students and adult learners pursuing degrees, technical qualifications and career training. Its June announcement, published when the count stood at 217, described 42 multiyear awards. Recipients explained that the support let them concentrate more on their studies and prepare for their next stage of work.
Those accounts echo the concern behind Tim Snow’s scholarship work in Boca Raton: support has to make sense over the course of a student’s education. Getting started is one moment. Having enough help to continue is another.
The space between
one contact and the next.
Belamarich’s counseling background gives particular context to Collaboratory’s work on behavioral health, though that work belongs to a broader team of staff and partners. In May 2026, the organization announced a $10,000 investment in a crisis-care data pilot with the Center for Progress and Excellence.
The project was designed to improve shared tracking of crisis-response measures, including emergency transport and follow-up. Partnership manager Maureen Chase described the aim of helping providers respond to demand and improve continuity.
It is easy to overlook this kind of investment because a database does not produce the same photograph as a new building. Yet the ability to understand what happens between a crisis and the next contact can matter to the quality of care. Better information can reveal where coordination is failing and where a team needs support.
I think about who carries the work of making those connections. Every organization may have its own intake process, hours and definition of the next step. From the resident’s side, the need is continuous. A partnership earns its usefulness when those separate processes begin to fit together, and fewer explanations have to start from the beginning.
Agree on what
needs to change.
The same preference for a defined problem appeared in the organization’s 2026 Community Impact Grant announcement. The planned $50,000 award sought a collaborative project addressing housing and transportation affordability, food access, or high-speed internet access. Belamarich emphasized measurable results and the responsibility attached to funds entrusted by donors.
There is a useful discipline in being that specific. Partners need to agree on what they are trying to change, how they will know whether it changed, and who will keep doing the work after the meeting ends.
Belamarich’s role sits in that space between intention and coordination. The work asks her to keep individual needs visible while helping organizations act together at a regional scale. A person returning to school or finding their way after a crisis may never need to know how those partnerships were arranged. They need the next connection to work.
That is what I admire about the responsibility Belamarich has taken on. It asks a leader to care about the part of the work that happens outside any one organization’s walls. Success may become visible as something wonderfully ordinary: a person knows whom to call, understands what will happen next, and has a workable way to get there.
About Dawn Belamarich’s work
Who is Dawn Belamarich?
Dawn Belamarich is president and CEO of Collaboratory in Fort Myers, Florida. Her background includes behavioral health leadership, mental health counseling and organizational leadership.
What does FutureMakers Coalition do?
FutureMakers Coalition works across Charlotte, Collier, Glades, Hendry and Lee counties to connect education and employment efforts. Its Navigator program helps adults explore training, enrollment, financial aid, prior credits and practical support.
What was the 2026 crisis-care data investment?
In May 2026, Collaboratory announced a $10,000 investment in a data pilot with the Center for Progress and Excellence. The project was designed to improve shared tracking of crisis response and follow-up; its stated aims are not presented here as measured results.
Sources: Collaboratory’s program pages and dated announcements, and the Housing Authority of the City of Fort Myers’ biography and board announcement. Checked September 2026. Reflections are Rob Urban’s.
I’m interested in the care behind work that makes people’s lives easier to navigate. That interest shapes my writing and my consulting. To read more or begin a conversation, meet Rob.