Carlos Curbelo was never sat down and told where his family came from. He was simply raised inside the story.

Growing up in Hialeah — the most Cuban city in the United States — Cuban radio played in his house nearly all day. He spoke Spanish before English. He attended Belén Jesuit, the Cuban school that Castro’s own revolution expelled from Havana in 1961 and reestablished in Miami. The family story that cut deepest belonged to his grandfather — a career military man, a lieutenant colonel. When Castro came to power, his grandfather was designated a “dangerous person” and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He served 12. The regime released him only because he developed Parkinson’s disease and they did not want to care for a sick prisoner. He made his way to Spain, then the United States. In prison, he had been learning Italian.

The collision with the wider world came at the University of Miami in 2000, during the Elían González controversy. Carlos had placed the now-iconic photograph on his car windshield as a quiet act of protest. He came out of class one day to find a note: “I will never understand why Cubans come here only to try to recreate their own dictatorship. Cubans should learn to play by the rules or go back.” He kept that note in his wallet for years. It crystallized his life’s task: the world did not understand Cuban Americans, and someone had to spend a career making sure it did.

After earning his Bachelor’s in Political Science and Business Administration at UM, he founded a public and media relations firm in 2002 and led it for 12 years. He returned to UM to earn a Master’s in Public Administration, was elected to the Miami-Dade County School Board in 2010, and then to the United States Congress in 2014, representing Florida’s 26th Congressional District. His father had arrived from Cuba at 21, worked as a busboy in New Orleans, and ate from the leftovers on other people’s plates. His mother came at 16 as one of five Cubans at Miami High. When Carlos was elected to Congress, he understood that what felt extraordinary to him was something of an entirely different magnitude for them.

In Congress he was consistently ranked among the most bipartisan members, leading on energy, environmental policy, immigration, gun reform, and tax policy. He served on the Ways and Means Committee and was an original co-author of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. In 2017, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation honored him with the New Frontier Award for his work promoting bipartisan cooperation on environmental policy. He chaired the House Brazil Caucus and was a prominent voice on international affairs.

Today he co-leads Vocero and serves as a national media analyst. He carries his grandfather’s legacy into every room he enters and asks the same thing of every Cuban American who comes after him: you don’t need a seat in Congress to tell the truth. You just need the courage to say it wherever you are.