David and Guillaume Leverrier

Brothers David and Guillaume Leverrier are continuing their late father’s legacy at his eponymous Palm Beach bistro, Chez Jean-Pierre. Lauded for its rustic French country dishes and signature indulgences such as eggs with caviar, the restaurant opened in 1991, a few years after Jean-Pierre moved his family down from Montreal. Like their father, who was a self-trained chef, the two learned on the job, with David in the front of the house and Guillaume working in the kitchen alongside his dad. Today, their mother, Nicole, handles the accounting, while David, a resident of Boynton Beach, serves as general manager, and Guillaume, who lives in Jupiter Farms, runs the kitchen, where he continues to cook his father’s menu—with a few of his own creations added into the mix. The brothers each have two children, and family remains their priority. Says David, “We’re the crazy family that works six days a week next to each other and then on the one day we’re closed, Sunday, we get together for lunch or dinner.”

Kristen Vila

When it comes to teaming up with her husband, Chris, on developing residential and commercial real estate projects, Kristen Vila says the pair abides by a skill she learned in improv class: Go with the flow, otherwise the skit shuts down. “We collaborate by saying ‘and.’ We don’t say ‘but’ and ‘no,’” she explains. “That’s how we work well together and build an idea. I think that’s a great rule for the workplace and for a marriage.” This approach allowed her and Chris, owner of Vila Built and North Bar Hospitality, to construct an inclusive community within Grandview Public Market, the industrial-chic food hall in West Palm Beach where the St. Louis native’s modern and playful aesthetic is on full display. As the market’s creative director, Vila helps vendors establish an identity through design and finds inspiration everywhere—from a giant yellow slide at Rapids Water Park to the lights at the South Florida Fair and her daughter’s glittering pizza-shaped purse. Relocating her family from New York City to Palm Beach afforded the NYU alumnus and mother of three greater creative freedom and more opportunities to get involved. She’s a member of the Palm Beach Recreation Advisory Commission and the Norton Museum of Art Young Friends Acquisition Council, and currently, she and Chris are working on bringing more food halls to cities like Detroit, where they hope to foster a similar sense of community.

Camila Helander Sargent

Creative endeavors blossom under the care of Camila Helander Sargent. A graduate of the Dreyfoos School of the Arts, she launched her career in New York City working for Nicole Miller as a print designer. This endeavor segued into retail, a stint as an art advisor with Baby Jane Holzer, and then launching Lisa Perry’s former Palm Beach store and helping the designer build her empire across Manhattan and the Hamptons. After relocating home and finding love with her now-husband, Tyler Sargent, she connected with Sara McCann and aided the interior designer in opening her retail concept, Hive Home, Gift & Garden, in 2013. As visual manager at Hive, Helander Sargent is the force behind the moving showroom’s inspiring vignettes and the company’s photo shoots. This summer, Hive will begin an expansion, a sign of the area’s greater transformation. Helander Sargent comes by her knack for all things aesthetic honestly. Her father, Bruce, is a well-known collage artist and her mother, Claudia, is a garden designer, and together they opened up their daughter’s perspective in “beautiful ways,” she says. “It allowed me to be creative and exist in a place where it’s okay to be extraordinarily different. [My parents] encouraged me to be myself and to respect and enjoy everybody’s differences.”

Nick Dello Joio

Show jumper Nick Dello Joio maintains a razor-sharp focus in the ring and in life. Despite having two equestrian parents (his father, Norman, is an Olympic-medal winner), he didn’t start riding until he was 14 years old. Although he was initially more interested in golf, football, lacrosse, and surfing, the Wellington-raised Dello Joio came around to horsemanship after riding on the beach in the Bahamas and watching his dad compete in Europe. “Once I started I was pretty much hooked right away,” he says. Thanks to his competitive nature and natural ease in the saddle, he went on to enjoy a number of big wins, including the Lake Placid Grand Prix and the International Bromont World Cup Qualifier, and to secure a sponsorship with Hermès. Now, Dello Joio has his sights set on competing at Spruce Meadows and in Europe this summer. He maintains a crazy schedule that includes training clients and their horses, but he still finds time to give back to the community and even hosts an annual barbecue at his farm every December to raise funds for Toys for Tots.

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