She sets the Standard in Real Estate Founders

When Suzanne Powers arrived in Naples, she did not come as one more agent looking for a place in a crowded market. She came as the founder of one of the Midwest's most accomplished luxury brokerages, a woman already regarded as one of Milwaukee's great business owners of her time. And she came because her clients asked her to.

To understand what it means when Suzanne accepts your Naples or Marco Island home, you have to understand who she is.

Naples has always belonged to people who build. Walter Haldeman, a Kentucky newspaper publisher, helped found the town in the 1880s on a stretch of Gulf shoreline most people had never heard of. Barron Collier carved the Tamiami Trail through the Everglades and gave his name to the county that grew around it. And for generations since, much of the energy behind Naples has come from the Midwest: the executives, manufacturers, and family business owners of Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Minneapolis who built companies at home and then built their second chapter on the Gulf.

Suzanne Powers knows these clients because she is one of them. Her family has spent winters on this coast since 2010, beginning with Christmas and Easter on Marco Island. She bought her own home in Fiddler's Creek in 2022. She sits on the ethics boards of the Naples Area Board of REALTORS® and the Marco Island Board of REALTORS®. She is not a visitor to this market. She is invested in it.

Milwaukee was built by founders like Frederick Pabst, Joseph Schlitz, William Harley and the Davidson brothers, and the families who commissioned architects like Alexander Eschweiler to design the estates that still define its lakeshore. For most of that history, the founders were men.

In 2011, Suzanne Powers wrote a new chapter. She left the security of someone else's firm and founded Powers Realty Group, Inc. She did not buy a franchise. She did not inherit a name. She built the company from the first yard sign, then bought and restored the building that became its award winning Shorewood headquarters.

That choice placed her in rare company. Only about 12 percent of REALTORS® work primarily as broker-owners. Women make up roughly two thirds of the profession, yet the ownership chair has long been held more often by men. In one California Association of REALTORS® study, 16 percent of women members were broker-owners, compared with 27 percent of men.

The pattern holds far beyond real estate. Of the roughly 5.9 million employer businesses in the United States, only about 1.4 million, or 22.9 percent, are majority owned by women, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey. More than three of every four companies that employ people in this country are still owned by men.

Suzanne did not wait to be offered a seat at that table. She built the table.

Powers Realty Group, Inc. did not come to Florida chasing a trend. It came because Wisconsin clients asked, and kept asking, for Suzanne to be their Florida broker. They had trusted her with their homes on the North Shore. They wanted the same founder, the same standard, and the same discretion when it was time to buy or sell on the Gulf.

In 2025, Suzanne answered by opening a second office at 780 Fifth Avenue South, in the heart of Naples. She serves Naples and Marco Island alongside Gretchen Keating, Vice President and Associate Broker of Powers Realty Group, Inc. and a resident of the Isles of Collier Preserve.

Federal data from the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells a hard truth: about one in five new businesses closes in its first year, roughly half are gone by year five, and only about one in four are still standing at fifteen years.

Powers Realty Group, Inc. celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 2026, and it is stronger today than ever:

• $2.6 billion in career sales across roughly 6,000 transactions
• RealTrends Verified #1 in Milwaukee and Ozaukee County for luxury listings over $800K, and #2 in Wisconsin
• #1 for the year in combined Shorewood, Whitefish Bay, and Fox Point sales over $800K, ahead of teams three and four times its size
• The highest average sale price in the State of Wisconsin, at $869,234
• Sophisticated sales reaching above $20 million
• A client network of more than 12,000 families

Suzanne's leadership has been recognized well beyond the closing table:

• Woman of Influence Award, Entrepreneur category, Milwaukee Business Journal, 2024
• Women of Distinction, Milwaukee Magazine, 2023 and 2024
• "Meet Wisconsin's #1 Boutique Broker," profiled as a leading woman in business by Entrepreneur magazine, March 2018
• Top 25 Milwaukee Real Estate Influencers, FeedSpot, 2025
• Cover feature, Milwaukee Real Producers, October 2019
• RealTrends 2026: #2 Large Team in Wisconsin and #217 nationally
• RealTrends Top One Half of One Percent of REALTORS® nationwide, year after year

Her insight has been sought by The Wall Street Journal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Milwaukee Business Journal, BizTimes, and here on the Gulf by Naples Illustrated and The Naples Press.

She has trained more than 263 agents and staff, served on Wisconsin's Standards Committee for ethics since 2007, and founded a charitable foundation that gives back to the communities her firm serves.

There is a difference between hiring a professional and retaining a founder.

When a company faces its most important legal matter, it does not want an associate. It wants the senior partner whose name is on the door. When a family entrusts Suzanne Powers with their Naples or Marco Island home, that is precisely who they have. Suzanne accepts a limited number of listings, and each one receives the full weight of the company she built.

She manages your sale as a project, with the discipline of a former Fortune 50 manager and the eye of a design consultant. Photography that averages about $3,000. Staging that typically exceeds $5,000. Guidance on finishes and materials from the woman known as the Queen of Staging and Remodeling. And something few sellers on this coast can find anywhere else: direct access to the Midwestern buyers who are moving here, many of whom already know her name.

She brings discretion and ease to executive and C-suite families because she is one of them: a CEO who signs the checks behind every strategy she recommends.

This is why Suzanne does not audition, in Milwaukee or in Naples. A founder is not one option on a list. She is the standard the list is measured against.

The founders who built Milwaukee and the founders who built Naples had something in common. They saw what a place could become and committed their lives to building it.

Suzanne Powers has done the same, first on the shores of Lake Michigan and now on the Gulf. One day, when the story of the great women in American real estate is told, she will be in it. Not because she joined the story. Because she built her chapter of it, in two cities, one home and one family at a time.

Suzanne Powers founded Powers Realty Group, Inc. in 2011 and serves as its CEO, Founder, and Broker-Owner, with offices in Shorewood, Wisconsin and at 780 Fifth Avenue South in Naples, Florida.

Because clients asked. Wisconsin families who trusted Suzanne with their homes on Milwaukee's North Shore wanted the same founder and the same standard when they bought and sold on the Gulf Coast. The Naples office opened in 2025.

Suzanne received the Milwaukee Business Journal's 2024 Woman of Influence Award in the Entrepreneur category, was named a Milwaukee Magazine Woman of Distinction in 2023 and 2024, was profiled by Entrepreneur magazine, is RealTrends Verified #1 in Milwaukee and Ozaukee County for luxury listings over $800K, and holds the highest average sale price in Wisconsin.

Yes. Suzanne and Gretchen Keating serve sellers and buyers in Naples and Marco Island, and Suzanne sits on the ethics boards of both the Naples Area Board of REALTORS® and the Marco Island Board of REALTORS®

With a private consultation. Contact the Naples office at 780 Fifth Avenue South through powersrealtyfl.com.