A 1,000-mile solo drive can be a daunting task for any adult, let alone a teenager from the South Bronx right out of high school.
But that’s exactly the challenge Joe Echevarria took on more than 50 years ago when, as a 17-year-old, he hopped into his 1969 blue Ford Maverick and drove south on I-95 from his native New York City to Florida to start college at the University of Miami.
“No phone. No radio. None of that existed,” recalled Echevarria, the University’s seventh president who earned a degree in business administration from the institution and went on to become the CEO of the major consulting firm Deloitte and a member of the University’s Board of Trustees.
“I have been part of this institution for 51 of its 100 years,” he said. “This institution took me in. I was going to be an auto mechanic, and there was nothing wrong with being an auto mechanic. Nobody in my family had gone to college. [The University] took me in and taught me things. It gave me resiliency, gave me courage, gave me toughness. More importantly, it taught me how to expand my horizons.”
Echevarria’s comments served as the opening remarks for the Centennial Community Reception: 100 Years of Impact event held on the Coral Gables Campus Monday evening.
With the University awash in preparations for upcoming festivities celebrating its 100th birthday—from carnival-style rides and games on the Foote Green to a block party, concert, and fireworks show—Monday’s event commemorated the institution’s century of academic excellence, innovation, and community impact, with businessman and philanthropist Kenneth C. Griffin and University trustee and benefactor Stuart A. Miller participating in a fireside chat that served as the highlight of the evening.
“Great universities anchor great American cities,” said Griffin, who founded and runs the Miami-based hedge fund firm Citadel and last year donated $50 million to Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, the only National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in South Florida that is part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and UHealth – University of Miami Health System.
“If you look at the last 50 years and the mass migration in our country, as people move south from the northern cities, the northern cities that have held their own are all anchored by great universities. It’s not just a throwaway statement. It’s an important reality that if you don’t have a great university anchoring your city, you are on a very difficult, long trajectory,” Griffin said. “The University of Miami, in bringing so many talented people to Miami. It creates the feedstock for the future vitality of our city. It’s an incredible gift to the city that this University has, over the last 100 years, risen to such prominence in America and has attracted so many great students.”
The University of Miami has accomplished in a century what has taken other academic institutions 200 years, said Griffin, echoing Echevarria’s opening remarks in which he noted the U’s recent success, including its membership into the Association of American Universities (AAU)—an invitation-only group of North America’s elite research institutions.
“In the race for the top, you started a hundred years behind many of the others, and you’re quickly closing the gap,” Griffin said.
He noted the University’s meteoric rise as a premier academic health system, praising the institution for its commitment to patients. “In a day where medicine is often portrayed as having become very cold and heartless, this is a place full of people with very big hearts,” Griffin said. “And when you have those difficult moments when you face a health adversity, to have the personal touch and the emotional connectedness from people who are world-class in what they do is incredibly helpful.”
But the University, he cautioned, must guard against self-satisfaction. The pursuit of excellence “must be a never-ending pursuit because the moment you rest on your laurels, complacency sets in,” Griffin said. “Tomorrow’s celebration here at University of Miami is a special moment. Remember it, celebrate it. I'm confident the celebration will be an incredibly touching moment, but a moment from which the foundation of the future is being built. There will be no resting on the laurels of what has been accomplished. There will be a focus once again on how to move the University of Miami forward.”
Board of Trustees chair Manuel “Manny” Kadre reiterated that advice, saying that while the University will celebrate its centennial on Tuesday, “the celebration will stop, and we’re going to launch ourselves into the next century.”
With the current U.S. presidential administration’s new far-reaching tariffs causing uncertainty around the world, Monday’s fireside chat, held inside the Donna E. Shalala Student Center’s third-floor ballroom, turned briefly to that hotly debated topic, with Griffin weighing in on both the merits and pitfalls of the policy.
He pointed out that millions of U.S. jobs, most notably in the manufacturing sector, have been relocated overseas, causing many small towns in the country to shutter factories. “For a litany of reasons that are not actually well understood, mobility in America has declined over the last three decades,” said Griffin, lamenting what he said has been a decline in the ability of people to move to different cities to pursue employment. “President Trump is very focused on how we can strengthen these towns across the country and believes that bringing manufacturing back to America is part of the solution,” he explained.
But by imposing tariffs on the nation’s trading partners, Griffin said, the administration risks creating economic change and distortions. “The single biggest problem is the tariffs as contemplated represent one of the largest tax increases in the history of the United States, and it’s a tax increase borne disproportionately by middle-class and economically-challenged households,” Griffin said. “The second challenge is that we are changing America’s role in the global world order. I worry that other countries will respond to America’s pushback on free trade by using this as an opportunity to displace American leadership.”
Miller, the executive chairman and co-CEO of Lennar Corporation, as well as chair of the UHealth Board of Directors, whose family made a landmark $100 million gift to the University’s medical school in 2004, lauded Griffin for the infusion of “new blood” he and his team are bringing to Miami that will help solve problems. Griffin moved Citadel’s operations to Miami three years ago and is planning to build a 54-story tower on Brickell Bay Drive that will serve as the firm’s headquarters. “That problem-solving element that you define as the core of what makes universities great, I think that’s what you put on display as you look at the complexity of the world as it is right now,” Miller said.
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Griffin responded. “The commitment at the University of Miami to transforming lives and creating the leaders who will unfold a brighter future is the ethos we need in America now more than ever.”
Monday’s event was a veritable who’s who of prominent South Florida government and academic officials. The mayors from three of South Florida’s most prominent municipalities—Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, City of Miami Mayor Francis Xavier Suarez, and Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago—attended and delivered comments.
The University of Miami’s last two presidents, Julio Frenk and Donna Shalala, also attended, with Echevarria praising them for setting the institution on the path to AAU membership.
Also, in attendance: Bernie Kosar, the former Hurricanes quarterback who led Miami to its first national championship in football.
“This celebration is about excellence,” said Laurie Silvers, chair of the Centennial Honorary Committee and the immediate past chair of the Board of Trustees, urging those in attendance to be stewards of the University. “Go into the classroom and motivate young people. This is a collective effort.”
