Miami, Sept. 13, 2021 — Miami Dade College’s (MDC) popular Mike Fernandez Global Business Leadership Series will host a virtual conversation with Doug Levine, Founder/CEO of Crunch Fitness and Big Move Properties; Co-Founder and Chairman of Fridababy; and CEO of Matuse; at 10 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 23. The event is free and open to the public.
Levine is a seasoned entrepreneur. He started Crunch Fitness with $5,000 and a one-room aerobic studio in New York City in 1989. In 2002, he sold it to a private equity firm. That same year he moved to Miami Beach with his wife Kaisa and raised his family, and in 2008, they started Fridababy with just $3,800 and built it into the top baby product company selling to 35,000 stores nationwide before they sold it to a private equity firm in 2017. Levine has invested in more than 30 companies, including Grundens, Zumba Fitness, Clean Market, Zyr Vodka, and Jungle Punks. Big Move Properties has creatively completed adaptive reuse on 25 buildings in the Miami, Wynwood, Little River, and Allapattah area. Frequent MDC collaborator and Miami Book Fair co-founder Mitchell Kaplan will lead the upcoming discussion with Levine.
MDC’s Mike Fernandez Global Business Leadership Series provides students with first-hand knowledge of best business practices and leadership by inviting top, renowned executives to share their experiences and discuss new trends in their respective industries. Past speakers include Marcelo Claure, CEO, SoftBank Group International and COO, SoftBank Group Corp; Ana Paula Assis, General Manager, IBM Client Transition Leader; Adriana Cisneros, Chief Executive Officer, Cisneros; Juan Carlos Liscano, Vice President, Miami Hub Operations, American Airlines; Patrick Goddard, President of Brightline Trains; Carlo Enrico, Mastercard’s President for Latin America and the Caribbean; Jeffrey Kratz, General Manager, Latin America, Canada and Caribbean Regions, Worldwide Public Sector at Amazon Web Services; Odilon Almeida, President of Western Union Global Money Transfer; Jordi Botifoll, Cisco’s President for Latin America and Senior Vice President for the Americas; Claudio Muruzabal, President for SAP Latin America and the Caribbean; Josh Leibowitz, Chief Strategy Officer of Carnival Corporation & plc, and Senior Vice President of Cunard North America; Craig D’Souza, Head of Global Investigation and Intelligence at Facebook; César Cernuda, President of Microsoft Latin America and Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Corporation; Eduardo Coello, Regional President of Visa for Latin America and the Caribbean; Donna Hrinak, Vice President of Boeing International and President of Boeing Latin America; Dr. Bernard Meyerson, Chief Innovation Officer at IBM Corporation; Laxman Narasimhan, President for PepsiCo Latin America and Adriana Cisneros, CEO of Cisneros.
For more information, please contact Isabel Artime, 305-237-3960 or iartime@mdc.edu.
WHAT: MDC’s Mike Fernandez Global Business Leadership Series Presents Doug Levine
WHEN: Thursday, Sept. 23, 10 – 11 a.m.
WHERE: In-person attendance is by invitation only. To register for the virtual event, click here