BOARD OF DIRECTORS

FRANK JIMENEZ, ESQ.

CHAIR
Frank R. Jimenez is General Counsel of GE HealthCare, a NASDAQ 100 medical technology company. He previously served as the general counsel for NYSE-listed companies Raytheon Technologies Corp., Raytheon Co., Bunge Ltd., Xylem Inc. and ITT Corp. In prior public office, Frank served as the 21st General Counsel of the Navy, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Deputy Chief of Staff and Acting General Counsel for Florida Governor Jeb Bush. He serves on the Board of Directors of Fortune 500 company HII (Huntington Ingalls Industries) and of the non-profit Equal Justice Works. He is a graduate of the University of Miami, the Yale Law School, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and the U.S. Naval War College.

JUAN CARLOS ESPINOSA

VICE-CHAIR
Juan Carlos Espinosa is a political scientist with degrees from the University of Miami and Florida State University. He is currently Dean and Faculty Fellow of the Honors College at Florida International University. Espinosa has taught numerous freshman and upper division seminars, most recently “Climate Change and Public Policy,” a two-semester course that blended climate science, literature, and community-based research. Espinosa is a national leader in interdisciplinary Honors education arguing an academic major does not give students sufficient preparation for life after college. A critical part of the reform is the tearing down of the wall between the curricular and the co-curricular and providing students with opportunities for experiential learning through internships, jobs, competitions, and projects.

LYDIA MARTIN

SECRETARY
Lydia Martín is an award-winning fiction writer and journalist who spent 25 years covering Miami’s growth and cultural evolution for The Miami Herald, as both reporter and columnist. Born in Havana and raised in Yonkers, Chicago, Flint and Miami, she was part of the Miami Herald team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Hurricane Andrew. Martín, a Yaddo, MacDowell and Bennington College fellow, has a BA in English and journalism from the University of Miami and an MFA in creative writing from Bennington College.

ANTHONY BAILEY

TREASURER
Dr. Anthony Bailey is the founding dean of the USC Bovard College and he also serves as the Vice President for Strategic and Global Initiatives at the University of Southern California. Before joining USC in 2011, Dr. Bailey led Kaplan International Colleges, a chain of 44 schools with operations across 20 countries, and earlier worked as a group brand manager at the Ford Motor Company and a marketing analyst at PortMiami. He started his career at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and he remains an active scientific diver and member of the American Academy of Underwater Sciences. Bailey received his BA and MA from the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami, his MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, and his doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania.

XAVIER CORTADA

FOUNDER AND ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Xavier Cortada is a socially engaged artist who uses art’s elasticity to work across disciplines to engage communities in creative problem-solving. Over the last three decades, he has created more than 150 public artworks, installations, and collaborative murals across six continents and is the only artist to create work at both of the Earth's poles. Pioneering eco-art in Miami, his community-driven art has catalyzed over 25 acres of ecological restoration in Florida, yielded participatory projects in every Miami-Dade County public school and library, and sparked regional campaigns to address sea level rise. Through his foundation, the Cuban-American artist engages people in hands-on initiatives that generate awareness and inspire action around the climate crisis and other social justice issues. Cortada served as Miami-Dade County’s inaugural artist-in-residence, was inducted into the State of Florida Artists Hall of Fame, and won a 2023 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Excellence in Science Communications Award. He earned bachelor's, master's, and law degrees from the University of Miami.