David Martin’s story begins before he was born — in the Cuba his grandparents were forced to leave behind.

In 1960 and 1961, his family scattered across two continents. His father, eleven years old, landed in Detroit — taken in by a family in a suburb called Huntington Woods. His mother, nine years old, first went to Mexico before eventually making her way to Miami. His grandfathers — one a master in the funeral business, the other a tobacco man — lost their livelihoods, their homes, their networks, and the family unit they had spent their lives building. They arrived in America with nothing but their work ethic and their will.

David grew up absorbing all of it. On the west side of Miami-Dade, at Tamiami Park, at Saint Teresa Elementary. Summers babysitting with his grandmother Dolores Mercedes in Little Havana. Weekends at Coral Gables after his parents moved there when he was ten. An extended family of tias, cousins, and grandparents who gathered constantly and talked constantly — about Cuba, about resilience, about what it meant to start over and still win.

His grandfather’s lesson was simple and permanent: don’t benchmark yourself against the competition — focus on your own contribution to the world. His father, a prominent real estate attorney at Greenberg Traurig, taught him something different: trust people first. Give them the chance to prove themselves. Character is revealed not in comfort, but in crisis.

Those lessons went to work early. At the University of Florida — where David earned his undergraduate degree, his law degree, and his MBA — he took out a $50,000 line of credit and opened a coffee shop. It ran from seven in the morning to one in the morning. When there was a line out the door, he felt a rush he’d never forgotten. That rush — building a place where people gathered — became his life’s work.

In 2001, at 23 years old, he and his father co-founded Terra. Today, Terra is one of the most consequential real estate development firms in the Americas — an $8 billion+ portfolio spanning luxury condominiums, workforce housing, hotels, parks, and public spaces across South Florida. His collaborators include Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano, and Bjarke Ingels. His projects don’t just build buildings; they reshape neighborhoods.

When asked what he hopes Miami looks like fifty years from now, David doesn’t talk about real estate. He talks about the Cuban story as the American story — one of immediate shock, disciplined strategy, and then something extraordinary: a community that didn’t just survive a city, but built one. He wants his children to understand that story. To be curious about it. To one day, perhaps, help carry its next chapter back to Cuba itself.