JHS President and CEO Carlos A. Migoya Receives Sand In My Shows Award

Jackson Health System President and CEO Carlos A. Migoya received the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce’s 2017 Sand in My Shoes Award on February 8. The award recognizes leaders who have made significant contributions to the South Florida area, demonstrating a deep love and commitment to the community as the best possible place to live, work and play. Below is Mr. Migoya’s acceptance speech:

Good evening, and thank you.

Usually when people say they’re “HUMBLED” by something, they’re using the wrong word. They usually mean that they’re PROUD – something is making them feel successful and accomplished. To be humbled is to feel small in comparison to something.

When I read those names in the front of your program, the women and men who have been honored this way before, I honestly do feel humbled.

So many of those early recipients were my role models and even my heroes. Hood Bassett took me under his wing as a management trainee at Southeast Bank back in the early ‘70s, when Cubans were barely welcome on the team. Bill Colson introduced me to community service, including this Chamber. And Alvah Chapman… how can anyone say enough about Alvah? He never asked me to work with him on a single project… didn’t ask me to work with him on We Will Rebuild after Hurricane Andrew… didn’t ask me to work with him on the Community Partnership for the Homeless, which now bears his name. The other old-timers in the room know what I mean: he didn’t ASK me to do anything. He just TOLD me what I was doing.

So when I say that I feel humbled, and when I say that I shouldn’t be listed among them, I am not being modest. I genuinely can’t imagine myself or anyone else having that kind of impact on South Florida today.

Those leaders sowed the seeds for a new kind of Miami, and it’s blossomed into something more than they could ever have imagined.

We are blessed to live in a community that has become diverse and complicated and eclectic… indeed, we are no longer the kind of place where a small group of influential men can unilaterally set the agenda for everyone else. My contemporaries in this room who have given their time and their treasure and their talent to build the next generation of Miami – far too many to name, but certainly including recent Sand recipients like Donna Shalala, Harve Mogul and Jorge Perez – have not just made a difference by wielding influence, but by doing the hard work of uniting many people behind shared goals. The work is often messier, but the result is a community that looks like the future of America. Our ROOTS are Cuban and Haitian and Brazilian and Venezuelan and Russian and Dominican and Colombian and African and Asian and European….but our LIVES are Miamian.

This is not an accident of our geography or our demographics – it’s the intentional result of leading through community.

Indeed, one of the qualities that Sand In My Shoes honorees share across these decades is our belief that Miami is greater today than it was yesterday, and our belief that WE are responsible for making it better tomorrow.

It is not enough to admit that we stand on the shoulders of giants. We must also strengthen our own shoulders to lift new leaders higher still.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen Ralph Renick’s classic editorial that gives this award its name. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that the footprints we leave on the beach for tomorrow are so much more important than the sand that’s in our shoes today.

How effectively did we nurture young talent through mentorship or grow new companies by being a generous business partner?

How powerfully did we help needy hospital patients or desperate homeless neighbors or eager children’s minds through our civic action?

How frequently did we show the patience and love to provide our children the kind of moral inheritance that can never be captured in a legal document?

And, most importantly, how well did we recognize that those are all really the same question?

The work I have shared at the Chapman Partnership, the Downtown Charter School, the United Way, and now at Jackson with UM and FIU… that is every bit as valuable to me as the success I’ve been a part of in the private sector.

The women and men who I have tried to guide and mentor in my professional life – many of whom are now leaders in their fields and still on the rise – feel to me like members of my family.

The friends who have shared my passions – public officials and board members… bankers and nurses… firefighters and cops, musicians and artists – have made successes sweeter and defeats less bitter.

And my own children… my sons, Carlos Jr. and Jose Luis, and my daughter-in-law Kim… they are more valuable than every deal I have ever made, more precious than every organization I have ever touched, and make me prouder than any success I have ever had. They’re here tonight, and I just want to publicly tell them thank you and I love you.

They remind me every day that – as powerful as it is to leave a name on a building – it is even more important to leave a legacy on someone’s heart.

In my life, I have never wanted for excitement. I’ve played drums in a rock band. I have raced Ferraris and Porsches on tracks around the world. I was there when Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear, and I was there when Hurricane Andrew did much, much worse to South Dade. I have survived two kids, three marriages, a whole bunch of bank mergers, a life-threatening bike crash, and – most dangerously – Miami city politics.

None of that adrenaline compares to the feeling of inspiring others to serve this great global village we are building in South Florida.

My only sadness tonight is that my parents are no longer with me to share this honor. Like so many of us, they suffered the loss of their home and their native land. They came to the United States in search of a dream that has always eluded too many people but blessed we lucky few. They never complained, but I know in my heart how much of their own lives they sacrificed for their only child. No one loves us quite like our parents do. I miss them every day, and tonight I feel their absence and – in a more important way – their presence.  

Before I wrap up, I want to thank two other women without whom this evening would not have been possible: Kathy Preece and Lisa Showers from the Chamber staff. They do the work of 10 people to make sure we’re all able to celebrate together, and I hope you’ll join me in giving them a round of applause

I am humbled to know that I am not and never will be Alvah Chapman or Hood Bassett or Ray Goode or Luis Botifoll or Bill Colson. But I AM proud to know that I learned so much from those titans, that I’m carrying on their work as best I can, and that my greatest hope is to bring along those future leaders who will eclipse us all in the next generation.

Thank you for this great honor and for sharing this night.