Pensacola law firm gives $2.5 million to new UWF leadership center

A Pensacola law firm donated a hefty sum of money to the University of West Florida this week to name the university's new business center.

The Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis & Overholtz law firm gave a $2.5 million check to UWF at a Tuesday ceremony, creating the Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis & Overholtz Center for Leadership housed within the university's College of Business.

The center was established this spring with the hiring of a leadership staff headed by the center's new director, retired U.S. Navy Capt. Tim "Lucky" Kinsella, the former commanding officer of Naval Air Station Pensacola.

"We want to create leaders of character, leaders of principle that are encouraged to make a positive difference in the world that we live in today. And that starts right here with our community," Kinsella said at the ceremony held at the law offices of Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis & Overholtz in downtown Pensacola.

"One day, we want to be the place that's first on the executives' tongues when they think about leadership training," Kinsella continued. "But executive leadership is just a small part of what we want to do. We envision ourselves as being an integral part of this community and in the greater area and lifting it up together."

The center plans to launch academic offerings to students and professional development seminars to business executives as early as fall 2023.

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UWF President Martha Saunders acknowledged the attorneys' generosity at the Tuesday ceremony.

"I speak on behalf of the University of West Florida, the College of Business and the Center for Leadership in thanking Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis and Overholtz for their generous $2.5 million gift in support of the center. Your support will allow us to do lot of good. Thank you very much," Saunders said.

"Since 2001, this law firm has served our city and improved the lives of those living across the region," Saunders said. "The leadership shown by this firm aligns with the skills and teachings that will be woven into the programs by the UWF Center for Leadership."

While Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis and Overholtz is based in Pensacola, its attorneys litigate cases across the country.

However, attorney Justin Witkin said "… we are very much in Pensacola in Northwest Florida. Our children were born here. This is our community."

When the firm's partner attorneys were thinking about how to give back to their home city, Witkin said, making a donation to UWF's new business center seemed like an "unparalleled" right choice.

"Bringing in great leadership has a synergistic effect for the entire community," Witkin said. "It will help everybody, whatever your cause, whatever your need is, it will help us all do better."

The center will have three primary purposes.

First, its leadership plans to offer an executive Master of Business Administration program.

"We listened to industry, and industry told us that they're getting MBA students who were great academically, but very weak in the leadership part," Kinsella explained.

The executive MBA program will cater to working business professionals with five to seven years of real world experience already under their belts.

"They're in the workforce. So, it will be mostly online with a week at the campus at the beginning and a week at the end of the capstone class. So you can do it while you're still working," Kinsella said.

The second prong of the center's design will be to hold executive leadership development seminars. Business executives and leaders will spend a week living and taking classes in downtown Pensacola.

"It's a very intensive sort of leadership boot camp for them — getting leaders to challenge their own paradigms about leadership, about who they are," Kinsella said. "So when they leave, they are, No. 1, reenergized to get back into their places of business, whether it's a business, nonprofit or government. And then, No. 2, they'll have more tools in their bag to be those agents of change in their organizations."

Lastly, the Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis & Overholtz Center for Leadership at UWF has ambitions to become a sort of community-level think tank.

"The other part that we initially envisioned is this being a forum for discussion for ideas, an incubator for change within our community, coalescing all those great things that are happening in our community," Kinsella said.

UWF administrators, Kinsella and his staff will try to use the center as "a nonpartisan, unbiased place where people can think freely about how we can move our community forward," according to Kinsella.

Colin Warren-Hicks can be reached at colinwarrenhicks@pnj.com or 850-435-8680.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: UWF receives $2.5 million from Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis & Overholtz