Meet Miami Business Club: Building Miami’s Next Generation of Business Community

Miami has never had a shortage of networking events. What it has lacked, until recently, is a business community built on something more durable than exchanging business cards. Miami Business Club is trying to change that, and the results suggest it is working.

Stefan Lingmerth, entrepreneur and longtime Wall Street professional, founded the club in late 2020 with a deceptively simple premise. Bring a group of like-minded professionals together in a room, encourage them to actually know one another, and let relationships do what they do when given the right conditions. The first gathering took place on February 3, 2021, at the Champagne Bar at the Four Seasons Hotel at The Surf Club in Surfside. It was small, and it was intentional. It was the beginning of something that has grown entirely through word of mouth and the kind of momentum that only real community produces.

Five years later, Miami Business Club has expanded its Board of Directors, built a dedicated leadership team, and established itself as one of the more genuine professional communities in a city that attracts entrepreneurs, investors, and executives from around the world. Lingmerth leads alongside Mario Rosano, Leslie Sanchez, Nataliia Onyskiv, Monica Nguyen, and Dietmar Lang, a team that has expanded the organization’s reach, grown monthly event attendance, and designed what the club calls its next chapter.

Photo Credit: Stefan Lingmerth

On October 10, 2026, Miami Business Club will host its inaugural Gala at the Miami Beach Convention Center, benefiting Miami Waterkeeper. The black-tie evening opens with a cocktail reception in the foyer of the Sunset Vista Ballroom, then moves into the ballroom for a sit-down dinner, entertainment, awards, and programming in support of Miami Waterkeeper. Additional entertainment follows dinner.

For MBC, the Gala is more than a fundraiser. It is the articulation of a long-term vision: an annual gathering that becomes one of the premier black-tie events in Miami Beach, the kind of evening that Miami’s business community marks on the calendar the same way the island’s philanthropic community marks its most significant galas. The City of Miami Beach is a partner in the event, hosted at the city-owned Convention Center. Mayor Steven Meiner has attended multiple MBC gatherings, and the relationship between the organization and local government has deepened steadily over the years.

The choice of Miami Waterkeeper as the beneficiary is specific and deliberate. Miami’s relationship with its water — Biscayne Bay, the Atlantic coastline, the Everglades watershed that feeds it all — defines the city’s environmental future. For a business community that believes in the city’s long-term success, investing in its waterways is not charity. It is infrastructure.

Events are not the organization’s only ambition. The team is building a platform designed to support the local business community through concierge-style services that connect customers, clients, investors, and businesses within the MBC network. The goal is to translate the relationships that monthly gatherings produce into something more sustained and more commercially meaningful for the people in the room.

This is a natural evolution for a club that has always understood that the real value of a professional community isn’t the event. It is what the event makes possible afterward.

Miami continues to attract the talent and capital that transform cities. Miami Business Club is building the connective tissue that allows that talent and capital to find each other, support each other, and grow together in a market that rewards exactly that kind of local investment. What Lingmerth started in a room at the Surf Club in February 2021 is now preparing for its most visible moment yet. The Gala on October 10 is the announcement. Everything after it is the plan.