This year’s Realtor Builder Tradeshow co-chairs have known each other since graduate school.
“I actually met Franchesca (Swierz) at the University of North Florida around 2000 when we were both working towards our master’s degree,“ said Donald Ster. “I then ran into her again at my father-in-law’s furniture store, and then started running into her regularly once we both got into real estate. We’ve been friends for years now!”
Ster is now with Wells Fargo and Sweirz is the owner of the Homes & Land Magazine franchise for this area.
How did they get paired up?
“I volunteered last year for the event and chaired the advertising side of things,” said Ster. “NEFAR then asked that I chair the event for their organization, while the Northeast Florida Builders Association side asked Franchesca to chair their side. So we were joined together.”
Ster has been with Wells Fargo about two and a half years. Before that he was with a smaller boutique bank called HomeBanc Mortgage, based out of Atlanta.
“The CEO was this really dynamic young guy named Patrick Flood,” said Ster. “It was a faith-based organization that did a lot of things right, but they were unfortunately a victim of the mortgage meltdown in mid-2007.”
He has a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Florida State University and a master’s in general business from UNF.
Swierz has owned her franchise of Homes & Land Magazine for seven years.
She has a long history in management and sales and marketing working as a manufacturer’s representative for Alfa-Parf, where she sold beauty supplies to salons for several years. Before that, she worked as a district sales manager for a jewelry company.
She has a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from David Lipscomb University and a master’s degree in business administration from University of North Florida.
“I was pre-med, but I decided I didn’t want to be a doctor,” said Swierz.