Cesar Alvarez to Receive the 2026 Sand in My Shoes Award

FACE board member Cesar L. Alvarez is about to add another honor to a career that has already reshaped Miami's legal and business landscape and this one comes from the city itself.

The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce has selected Alvarez, Senior Chairman of global law firm Greenberg Traurig, as the recipient of its 2026 Sand in My Shoes Award, widely regarded as Miami's most prestigious community leadership honor. The award will be presented at a celebratory dinner on October 15 at Jungle Island.

For those who know Alvarez only through his professional record, the accomplishments speak for themselves. During his years as Greenberg Traurig's Executive Chairman and CEO, Alvarez and his partners took the firm from eight offices and 325 attorneys to more than 36 locations and roughly 1,850 lawyers worldwide, building it into one of the top ten law firms in the country in the process. It's the kind of growth story that gets taught in business schools.

But the Sand in My Shoes Award, established in 1981, isn't handed out for growth charts. It recognizes people who have made a lasting difference in the life of the community itself and Alvarez's version of that story starts long before Greenberg Traurig, with a Cuban immigrant teenager arriving in Miami with far less than he'd eventually build.

"My father taught me that as immigrants and refugees we have a responsibility to leave the community better than we found it."

It's a sentiment that will sound familiar to anyone who has heard him speak about his own family's arrival from Cuba and it's the same conviction FACE was built around more than four decades ago.

Alvarez's connection to FACE goes beyond a seat on the board. He is one of the leaders featured in FACE's oral history archive, having sat for an interview as part of the organization's original Knight Foundation-funded initiative; a first-person account, now permanently preserved, of exactly the journey the Chamber is honoring him for this fall.

Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Alfred Sanchez put it simply in announcing the award: Alvarez's path from Cuban immigrant teenager to one of the most influential legal and civic leaders in South Florida is, in Sanchez's words, a textbook example of the American dream and Miami has been the beneficiary of his leadership and generosity ever since.

FACE congratulates Cesar Alvarez on this well-earned recognition. It's a story the organization has already worked to preserve for future generations and one more reminder of what the exile generation, and the children who carry its example forward, have built in this city.