Alexandra (Alex) Villoch was two years old when her family left Cuba. She does not remember the flight — but she remembers the tricycle.

Her father had been arrested and released. When he came home, he said four words: it’s time to go. He left for Miami immediately with her uncle. Her mother — one of Cuba’s first flight attendants, photographed on the front page of the Miami Herald during water training — used her airport connections to ship whatever the family could still legally bring to Miami. When little Alex finally arrived at Miami International Airport in October 1960, someone took a photograph. She is on her tricycle, biking up and down the terminal at two years old. They brought it with them.

Her father, a civil engineer, built a career that took the family across two continents — the radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico; the Jurun-Marinala hydroelectric plant in Guatemala, which still powers Guatemala City today, the Cuajone Copper Mine in Peru, just to name a few of the many adventures. Alex attended 13 different schools between kindergarten and high school. In Fort Worth, Texas, a boy in 10th grade overheard her speaking Spanish with her mother and said: what is wrong with you? Don’t you know how to speak normal? It was the first time she understood she was different. Years later, this exchange helped shape her decision to make Miami home.

A proud graduate of Miami Dade College and the University of Miami, Alex built a career spanning aviation, finance, media, and healthcare. After a decade at Eastern Air Lines managing finance across 39 international locations, she joined Southeast Bank. Then at United Airlines, she served as General Manager of Miami International Airport and the Caribbean, overseeing 1,100 employees and helping develop the $1.1 billion South Terminal project. In 2000, she joined the Miami Herald Media Company, eventually becoming its first female publisher in 116 years of history. During her tenure, the Miami Herald earned two Pulitzer Prizes. When someone told her she was the first woman to hold that role, her answer was immediate: my job is to make sure I’m not the last.

She now leads the Baptist Health South Florida Foundation — the philanthropic arm of one of the Southeast’s largest healthcare systems, with 29,000 employees, 12 hospitals, 4 institutes and more than 200 outpatient centers serving 3.5 million patient encounters every year. She is also a 22-year cancer survivor, answering calls every day from people who have just been diagnosed and don’t know where to turn.

There is one more inheritance she carries. Her maternal grandfather, a naval engineer who ran the port of Havana, was never allowed to retire by Castro. He died still being forced to work. But from 1960 until his death in 1972, he wrote handwritten stories to his grandchildren — illustrated in pen and ink, each child by nickname. Alex was Tati. Tati Viaja a la Luna. Tati va a Safari. The later letters are written in pencil — I’m sorry, there are no pens — and on the reverse side of letters her mother had sent. Why? There is no paper. Her daughter transcribed every story as a gift. They are cataloged now, in chronological order. They will not be lost.