Festival names grant director

NAPLES — Trustees who oversee the Naples Winter Wine Festival that awarded more than $7 million to charities this year appointed Maria Jimenez-Lara as the grants director.

Since 2001, the Naples Children & Education Foundation has raised $107 million for child-related charitable causes in Collier County. The group created the Naples Winter Wine Festival, one of the biggest charitable wine-festival endeavors in the nation.

Since 1999, Jimenez-Lara has served as director of charter schools for RCMA in Immokalee, the largest nonprofit childcare provider in Florida. While at RCMA, she coordinated the opening of the organization's two schools and oversaw more than 410 students with 70 teachers and support staff.