Amid all the debate about immigration into the United States, two of the subjects of articles in this issue remind us how immigrants can turn into powerful leaders and grow incredible businesses.
Our cover story is about Salo Sredni, whose grandparents on his father’s side originally were from Poland. They fled to the Soviet Union, but found life wasn’t so great there. The family was deported to Uzbekistan, which is where Sredni’s father was born.
After the war, Sredni’s family moved to Colombia but, in the 1980s, ended up in the middle of the narcotrafficking wars. Sredni and his parents went on a vacation in Miami, but his grandfather told them not to come back because of the danger.
Sredni ended up at age 14 attending Hebrew Academy. “It was fun but I did not speak English well, so I had to adjust real quickly,” he says.
Sredni later went into accounting and then ultimately become CEO of TradeStation, the leading platform for professional traders. He also became chief operating officer of the Japanese brokerage company that brought TradeStation. Now, he’s trying to transform the workers’ compensation experience.
This month’s “CEO Connect” profiles Tony Argiz, who, since 1997, has been chairman and CEO of MBAF, the largest local accounting firm in South Florida. Argiz was part of the “Pedro Pan” exodus of 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children who were sent to safety in the United States after the Castro regime took over.
Argiz was a ward of the Catholic Church and stayed at a boarding school in Tampa for five years until his parents came to the United States.
“Then, it was a horrible experience. But when I look back, it was important to have gone through that period in my life and it really matured me rapidly,” he says.
While political discourse sometimes paints immigrants as a detriment to our economy, Sredni and Argiz are examples of how some of them also contribute mightily to our prosperity.
Correction
The Christine E. Lynn Women’s Health & Wellness Institute, which has added the Senographe Pristina mammography device, is at Boca Raton Regional Hospital. The health care article in the March issue named an incorrect hospital.
The March Doral City Report incorrectly stated that Lennar was a partner in Codina Partner’s Downtown Doral project.
