After Ron earned a degree in economics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he started Balser Companies, which developed special benefits for companies and was a nationally recognized advisor to Fortune 1000 companies. He also met Barbara, who had her own company before becoming CEO and co-chair of Balser Companies. She has served as national chair of the Anti-Defamation League, and they both have been recognized for their humanitarian and charitable contributions. Throughout their busy lives, collecting art remained a constant, whether they had room for it or not. “The collecting never stopped. It doesn’t matter if you do not have a place for it,” Barbara says. “Every time I think we are out of space we manage to manufacture some.” Some of their art resides at The Wharton School Balser Art Collection, as well as the Balser Art Collection at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. They found more space 17 years ago when they were in Santa Fe on a business trip. “When we were there, it was like someone was welcoming us home,” Barbara says. “We’d looked at homes everywhere, but never bought. We bought a house.” Then, after years of coming to Naples for meetings, they bought a condo in 1998. “We bought that on the spur of the moment,” Barbara says. “We were walking on the beach after our last meeting and saw people on the beach with little children. Santa Fe is not about babies. We had new babies.” 82 NAPLES ILLUSTRATED
The Balsers’ art-filled living room Upper left: Ron and Barbara Balser by a Cubist guitar series by Picasso