The Oral History Project Adds Fourteen New Stories
Some of Miami's most recognizable names just became part of FACE's permanent record; not for their titles, but for their roots.
Fourteen new interviews have joined FACE's oral history archive, premiering at the organization's 24th Annual Excellence Awards & Oral History Luncheon in front of 450 guests. The subjects are described by FACE as its "Distinguished Voices" leaders across media, politics, education, and business who agreed to sit down and share not their resumes, but their family's Cuban story.
Among them: NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas, the first Latino to host the weekday broadcast; former U.S. Congressman Carlos Curbelo; Florida International University President Jeanette M. Nuñez, a former Lieutenant Governor of Florida; Miami Dade College President Madeline Pumariega, the first woman to lead the institution; and Alexandra Villoch, CEO of the Baptist Health South Florida Foundation and former President & Publisher of the Miami Herald.
The new interviews build on FACE's original oral history initiative, launched in 2024 with a Knight Foundation grant that produced twenty broadcast-quality interviews with some of Miami's most prominent Cuban American leaders including Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Eduardo Padrón and Greenberg Traurig Senior Chairman Cesar Alvarez. That project also delivered an augmented reality exhibition and a permanent digital archive, premiering to a 600-person luncheon crowd in 2025.
FACE didn't stop when that grant ended. Using its own funds, the organization moved immediately into a second phase focused on the generation that didn't flee Cuba itself, but inherited the exile identity anyway; the sons and daughters who carried that history into American boardrooms, newsrooms, campuses, and city halls.
"You may notice that some of our Distinguished Voices are also members of our board. That is no coincidence. At FACE, the people who serve are the same people who share."
What makes the project distinct isn't just who is being recorded it's why. Every existing Cuban oral history effort in Miami, from the University of Miami's Botifoll Project to Miami Dade College's archive, serves scholars and researchers. FACE's model treats oral history as something more immediate: a race against time to capture stories before the generation that lived them is gone.
The archive continues to grow. FACE has applied for additional funding to deploy a mobile oral history unit at community events across Miami-Dade moving beyond boardrooms and stages to capture the stories of the grandmothers, the small business owners, and the Pedro Pan children whose voices have never been systematically recorded.