There is a story within today’s story. Forty-three years ago, Armando Codina sat in a room with three other Cuban exiles and co-founded FACE — because he believed this community’s story deserved to be told, defended, and celebrated. Tonight, his daughter Ana-Marie receives this organization’s Business Award. The Codina name has been woven into FACE since its very first year. And it will be part of its future.

Ana-Marie grew up with Operation Pedro Pan as simply part of her family’s story. Her father, Armando, came to the United States as a child through that historic program — one of more than 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children sent to American soil by parents who chose uncertainty over indoctrination. She was always aware of it. In college, she wrote her thesis on the Pedro Pan experience, going deeper into a story she had lived beside her whole life. When asked what her father brought from Cuba into her home, her answer is immediate: my grandparents. They didn’t speak English. They were the living connection to the island. The food, the music, the pride in their roots — it all came through them.

His story gave her one thing above all else: gratitude. Gratitude for being born in this country. Gratitude for the courage her grandmother showed in sending a child alone across the water not knowing what waited on the other side. One word to describe her father: exceptional. That gratitude, she says, is the foundation of everything she has built.

She co-founded Codina Partners with her father in 2009, eventually becoming its CEO. Before that, she spearheaded the master planning and development of Downtown Doral — a 250-acre mixed-use urban center in Miami-Dade County that she describes not as a collection of buildings, but as a community. More than 5,000 residential units. The Downtown Doral Charter Schools. Doral Government Center. A three-acre public park. U-Health Doral Medical Center. A cultural arts center. And families who walk their kids to school, walk to the grocery store, go to the park. “What makes a place feel like a community?” she was asked. “People,” she answered, without hesitation.

She holds an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a B.A. from Trinity College. In 2020, she was named a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Knight Foundation, chairs both Downtown Doral Charter School boards, and is Founding Co-Chair of Partnership for Miami. She is a past president of the Miami City Ballet Board of Trustees. What drives her more — legacy or impact? “Impact. Absolutely.”

She was asked to finish a sentence: The exile story… Her answer: “…is still being written.” Tonight, FACE adds another chapter.