A veteran Hispanic executive says this exclusive economic club will ‘elevate’ Miami
■ Pioneering public relations executive Lourdes Castillo says Miami having its own economic club signals that it has truly arrived at the top rank of U.S. business hubs.
For 30 years, executive, mom, women’s advocate and political activist Lourdes Castillo has been a fixture in Miami’s business and civic circles, either behind the scenes or at the forefront of the city’s development as an epicenter of Hispanic and Latin American commerce.
Now, after a long professional break to raise four children, a period in which she worked as a political volunteer and helped her now ex-husband build a thriving legal business, Castillo is embracing a fresh direction — both in her own career and in Miami’s rapid evolution as a nexus for big-time finance, tech, banking and law.
At 55, Castillo has re-established her business, LMC Communications, a pioneer in the local Hispanic market, by taking on tech clients setting up a Miami beachhead. Those include Rhove, an online crowdfunding platform where people can invest small amounts in real estate projects, including the buildings where they rent apartments.
She is also playing a lead role in a civic endeavor that aims to solidify the city’s newfound status among the nation’s business elite as board director and one of four founders of the Economic Club of Miami. First formed in New York more than a century ago by J.P. Morgan before spreading to Chicago,
San Francisco and other centers of U.S. business and finance, economic clubs are membersonly forums where civic leaders and executives meet to hear prominent speakers and hash out the business-related issues of the day.
Miami being tapped to start its own economic club signals that it has truly arrived at the top rank of U.S. business hubs, Castillo said. After an invitation from the New York club, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, a leading cheerleader for the relocation and expansion of big business to the city during the COVID-19 pandemic, asked Castillo to help launch the local club along with businessman Jeb Bush Jr., economist Jon Hartley and Jeremy Schwartz, a mayoral legal advisor.
The group co-sponsored its first event, a fireside chat with tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel, a new Miami resident, last year. During Art Basel week in early December, the club held a forum on art NFTs featuring FTX exchange co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried. More recently, a club forum on the future of Miami’s real estate industry and the current housing crisis featured Rhove founder Calvin Cooper, former Florida Congressman Patrick Murphy, University of Miami economist Noah Williams and former Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin.
Next up, on Nov. 7: An invitation-only event featuring
Ken Griffin, the billionaire financier who is moving his Citadel empire from Chicago to Miami.
The club’s launch is a sign of how far Miami has come since Castillo, who is Cuban American and grew up in Fort Lauderdale, moved to the city to work in 1990 after graduating from college, she said. She formed LMC Communications, which she said was the first public relations and marketing firm in South Florida to focus on Hispanic and Latin American clients, after realizing it remained a huge untapped market.
“We’re talking about the early ’90s,” Castillo said. “Miami was known for Cubans, for nicara-güenses. But you really didn’t have this influx of [other] Latin Americans coming in. I started realizing there was a niche for businesses and clients looking at Latin America as a unique opportunity or market for them.”
Latin America subsequently became Miami’s business
“bread and butter,” Castillo said. But the influx of big finance and tech from New York, California and Chicago is now taking the city to a different level, she said.
The Miami Herald sat down with Castillo, newly single and living on Fisher Island with her youngest daughter, a high school senior, to talk about the Economic Club of Miami and the city’s and her own business evolution on the occasion of National Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs through Oct.
15. (The interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Q: How have you seen Miami evolve since you started in business?
A. I think Miami has always been a business point because we are at the center of Latin America. So we have always been an epicenter for business. But what takes us now even further is that in addition to having that, now you’ve got a mayor who has been a visionary, and has said, “All these cities and all these states are closing down and they aren’t allowing businesses to prosper. Please come here, I will help you. We’re an open state, we’re an open city. I want to help connect the dots for you so that your business will prosper here.”
So how we’ve evolved is that we’ve come from being an epicenter because of our geographical location to being an epicenter because of our political leadership in the city. I think it goes on a par with why we have an economic club. The economy of Miami right now is at par with some of these other cities.
Q. What is an economic club?
A. Miami’s booming right now, the economy here is prospering. To Miamians, to our bread and butter, which is Latin America, they don’t really know what an economic club is. It sounds like a social club. But when you talk about New Yorkers, when you talk about people from Chicago or San Francisco, they know exactly what an economic club is. They know the power and the elevation of conversation within the club and its members.
It elevates the conversation. I was in New York recently and somebody said something and I was kind of offended, something to the effect of Miami is only party and the beach. Low IQ. And I said, “No, I’m sorry to tell you it’s not. We’ve raised the level of conversation.” Now, you’re talking about really substantial economic impacts in our city. And that’s what the economic club does. It brings intellectuals and economists together to talk about what can we do, how can we connect the dots and elevate the nature of conversation in the city.
I think it’s going to be an epicenter, a think tank. We want Miami to stay at that level of intellectual conversation, of conversation about how do we help the people that don’t have housing, how do we help solve problems, to be a better community, so that we all prosper. And that’s what it’s about.
Q. Can anyone join? A. There’s a membership and you have to be vetted. So not anyone can join. It’s like any other club. Now, when we have events, we invite people to come. As we grow, there will be a vetting committee that will determine who would bring value to the club. And those people will be invited to participate. It’s not a club for looking for business. It’s a club for talking about business.
We are going to put a cap on it. We haven’t determined what that cap will be. It’s not going to be for the masses. We’re not there yet. We’re still in the recruiting stage.
Q. What other events do you have planned? What mix of speakers do you hope to attract?
A. We will have an event introducing Ken Griffin from Citadel to Miami.
He’s very close to the Chicago economic club. So he’s very familiar with it. These new transplants to Miami from Chicago and New York know what the economic clubs in those cites have done. They’re all very accepting of doing something with the [Miami] economic club. It’s a matter of educating our community here that that exists. [Griffin’s] people reached out to us. I’m sure they’re going to be members and we won’t have to vet them (laughing)!
I see more speakers coming from Latin America. I see us being different because of what Miami is. We are the epicenter of the Americas. We are the gateway to Latin America. That is what distinguishes us from any other city in the United States. And that’s what I believe we are going to see more of versus New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
Q How do you see your own evolution going forward as a Hispanic businesswoman in Miami?
A. As the city is re-identifying itself, I am re-identifying my career as Miami is evolving from gateway to the Americas to being the gateway to the Americas and the epicenter of businesses that want to prosper, [to have] the freedom to be able to do business. Many clients, many people are looking to me because I understand Miami, because I understand the essence of what we are as a city. I hope to be able to contribute to Miami and to all the businesses coming here, so we can continue to grow. The mayor’s people are starting to call me Miami’s tech madrina (godmother) (laughing). I’ll take it, it sounds impressive.