People of influence: Wayne Daltry

He's Lee County's resident sage — futurist, historian, sociologist, demographer, consensus-builder.

For more than four decades, Wayne Daltry helped shape Southwest Florida. Before retiring as director of Lee County's Smart Growth department in 2010, Daltry spent 27 years with the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council — 20 as executive director.

He now serves on the board of several environmental nonprofits, including Caloosahatchee River Citizens Association (Riverwatch), which he helped found.

A committed-yet-pragmatic environmentalist, Daltry is known for big-picture thinking, as well as conversational riffs on philosophy, history, politics, literature, geography and human nature.

Without him, Lee County would be "disorderly and overburdened," former Lee County Commissioner Ray Judah told The News-Press in 2005. "(He) has ensured our long-term prosperity because he understood its foundation, the basis of our economic value — our resources."