Naples chamber names award after late attorney, civic leader

The Leadership Collier Foundation, an affiliate of the Greater Naples Chamber, has renamed its annual award recognizing exceptional community leadership in honor of longtime Collier County attorney and Naples civic leader John Passidomo, who died in April 2024. 

The award will now be called the John Passidomo Distinguished Alumni Award, according to a statement, in recognition of Passidomo’s dedication to Collier County. The Leadership Collier Foundation announced the change during its annual graduation celebration May 21. The event was held at Gulfshore Playhouse and celebrated the completion of 2025 Leadership Collier and Associate Leadership Collier programs.

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“John Passidomo’s leadership, quiet strength and unwavering commitment to Collier County left an indelible mark on all of us,” Scott Salley, a co-founder of Leadership Collier, says in the release. The award, he adds, “is a fitting tribute to a man whose life embodied the very best of what leadership stands for.”

The LCF also announced that John Passidomo was named the 2025 recipient of the award. State Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, who is also his widow and a Leadership Collier alumna, accepted the award in his honor. “Our community is immeasurably better thanks to the dedication of John and Kathleen Passidomo,” Greater Naples Chamber President and CEO  Kristina Park says in the statement. “They didn’t just meet the Leadership Collier Foundation’s mission to be engaged, be informed and be the difference; they lived it. It is with immense pride that we continue to celebrate John’s enduring legacy of leadership through the John Passidomo Distinguished Alumni Award.”

John Passidomo, among many community and leadership roles, was vice mayor of the city of Naples from 1990 to 1992; chairman and member of the Naples Planning Advisory Board from 1986 to 1990; and chairman of the Economic Development Council of Collier County from 1995 to 1997. He’s a former president of the Collier County Bar Association and a former chairman of its Real Estate Attorneys’ Section, and  in 2019 he received the Donald E. Van Koughnet “Lion of the Law” Award for Professionalism from the Collier County Judiciary.

The Leadership Collier Foundation works to activate the potential of leaders to build a stronger Collier County through the programs and initiatives it governs: Leadership Collier, Associate Leadership Collier and Youth Leadership Collier. The Greater Naples Chamber is a nonprofit organization of more than 1,000 active members that works to strengthen the local economy and promote the business community.