WorldCity Business Magazine

Image Miami

by Ken Roberts

Someone asked me the other day what I did before founding WorldCity.

I think she was expecting to hear that I had been in freight forwarding or worked for an international bank, because the answer surprised her. I founded and then sold the magazine South Florida Parenting. A different animal, to be sure, but the ultimate goal was the same.

When I started South Florida Parenting in 1989, the most common refrain was that this was a terrible place to raise children. South Florida, or so the line went, was filled with old people.

As odd as that might sound today to any of you who are parents, it was the perception. When I departed, the magazine was the largest circulating local parenting publication in the nation, and it remains an incredible resource today. Not too many years ago, I noticed that South Florida had been called one of the best places to raise children by a national parenting magazine.

I started WorldCity with a similar goal to show the international business community what an incredible place this was. To build a community. When I launched South Florida Parenting, I had no children. When I started WorldCity, what I knew about international business, I could fit in my shoe. I had, and still have, a lot to learn.

So do we all. A few years ago, a professor at the University of Miami did a study of Miami and five U.S. cities of comparable size, tracking their mention in five leading U.S. newspapers for a three-month period. The good news was that Miami was mentioned far more than the other cities Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Philadelphia and Denver. The bad news was that it was not mentioned for international business. Not once.

During our most recent CEO Roundtable, I asked the participants what South Florida needed to do to move to the next level, to become a true “world city.” While we no longer hear crime mentioned the good news we hear education and workforce mentioned frequently.

On this day, however, the comments were improve our image and let the world know that this is an international business center. Clearly, the world knows we have sand and sun. It needs to know we have more than 1,300 multinationals overseeing hundreds of thousands of employees here, in Latin America and around the world. It needs to know that we will surpass $60 billion in trade this year for the first time. It needs to know that we are the fifth-leading data hub in the world and that we have more international banks and consulates than all but a few U.S. cities.

WorldCity can be a powerful force for that change in perception but we need your help. Communicate that message back to your company’s global headquarters, whether it is in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, or Hsichih, Tawian.

South Florida is poised to rise to the next level to “world city” status. It has licked its crime-ridden image. It is on the way to overcoming the notion that it is culturally deficient, with the Miami Performing Arts Center soon to come online, with Art Basel now a regular event and, possibly, with the addition of a permanent home for the Cirque du Soleil on Miami Beach.

We must tackle education and workforce issues. Transportation is a looming problem, particularly in the trade community. And revealing the truth about our reality the South Florida we know to the rest of the world should be a top order of business. Your business.