Bridging Generations: Young Professionals Initiative Launches

For 44 years, FACE has been led largely by the generation that either lived the Cuban exile firsthand or grew up in its immediate shadow. That's beginning to change.

At its 24th Annual Excellence Awards & Oral History Luncheon, FACE announced the launch of its Young Professionals Initiative (YPI) a new program designed to bring second- and third-generation Cuban Americans into the organization's leadership pipeline. Rather than open enrollment, FACE is starting deliberately small: just ten founding member spots, reserved for young professionals who want a direct hand in shaping what the organization becomes next.

"This mission does not end with our generation. We are actively seeking ten founding members from the second and third generation Cuban American community to help shape the next chapter of this organization."

The timing isn't incidental. FACE's oral history archive, now well past two dozen recorded interviews, exists precisely because the first-generation exile population is aging, and the urgency to capture their stories only grows each year. YPI is FACE's answer to a parallel question: who carries this mission forward once that work is done?

Founding chairman Nelson Albareda, whose own parents left Cuba in the early 1960s, made the same point in his remarks to the luncheon.

"If you are part of the second or third generation, if you grew up hearing those stories at your dinner table the way I did, we need you," Albareda said. "FACE needs you. This mission is yours now as much as it is ours."

YPI founding members won't be handed a title and a newsletter. The initiative is built around direct involvement; helping shape programming, community events, and the organization's next phase of growth, alongside FACE's Executive Committee and Board of Trustees, which itself was newly formalized this year with co-founder Armando Codina as its first appointed member.

Miami's Cuban American population is generations removed from Havana now, but organizations like FACE are betting that identity doesn't dilute with distance it just needs a next generation willing to carry it. With ten founding seats and a room full of Cuban American professionals who just watched their own community's history play out on a luncheon stage, FACE may not have to look far to fill them.

Cuban American professionals interested in FACE's Young Professionals Initiative can learn more by emailing info@facecuba.org.