One City One Future Foundation

Building What Lasts: From Experience to Action to Legacy

Twenty-five years ago, Miami stood at a crossroads.

City Hall faced a crisis of vision, trust, and capacity. Unemployment was high, the tax base was weak, the city’s finances were under state oversight, development had stalled, and many neighborhoods, parks, streets, and public spaces were deteriorating. Miami’s national image was too often associated with crime, poverty, political dysfunction, and decline. 

The response was built around a simple idea: One City, One Future.

That idea was not about one person or one administration. It was about bringing people together around a shared belief that Miami could do better. Progress required stronger government, restored trust, ambitious goals, public-private partnerships, neighborhood involvement, difficult choices, and a willingness to act.

Over time, Miami changed dramatically. Its global profile, economy, neighborhoods, culture, demographics, technology, and relationship to the world evolved in ways few could have fully anticipated. 

But success is never final.

Today, Miami faces a new generation of challenges. Affordability, mobility, infrastructure, climate, education, public trust, technology, economic opportunity, and civic participation will shape the next twenty-five years. Many of today’s residents are too young to remember the Miami of 2001, while many others arrived after that period of transformation. The challenge is no longer simply whether Miami can improve. It is whether we can continue improving, adapt to new realities, and prepare the next generation to lead. 

That is why we are creating the One City One Future Foundation, or OCOF.

OCOF is designed to carry forward the most useful lessons from Miami’s transformation while building new capacity for the future. The goal is not to recreate the past or prescribe the future. It is to create a civic platform where experience, ideas, relationships, and action can come together.

At the center of OCOF is a simple belief: meaningful change does not happen by accident. It requires people willing to participate, establish ambitious goals, build coalitions, challenge assumptions, navigate disagreement, make difficult choices, and turn ideas into action. 

OCOF will bring together accomplished leaders and emerging changemakers from across business, government, nonprofit organizations, neighborhoods, education, philanthropy, and civic life.

A central asset will be the practical knowledge of people who have already done difficult work. They understand how a vision becomes reality, how partnerships are formed, how resources are assembled, how resistance is navigated, how an initial “no” can become possible, and why some promising ideas succeed while others do not. 

That experience is valuable only if it is shared.

OCOF will create opportunities for the next generation to learn how systems work, engage across differences, build meaningful relationships, develop and test ideas, use data and technology effectively, communicate a vision, and move from discussion to execution. 

Its core mission is to:

• ensure that Miami does not rest on past accomplishments, but builds on them;
• equip the people who will help shape Miami’s next twenty-five years;
• connect experienced leaders with emerging changemakers;
• preserve practical civic knowledge and make it accessible to future leaders; and
• build the capacity to solve difficult problems and turn promising ideas into action. 

OCOF is intended to endure beyond any one individual, political cycle, or moment. It is being designed as a long-term civic institution focused on leadership, learning, collaboration, problem solving, and action. 

The 25th anniversary of Miami’s transformation gives us an opportunity to look back, recognize the many people who contributed, and preserve the lessons of an important period in our city’s history.

But the larger purpose is forward-looking.

The anniversary commemorates what was built. OCOF invests in who and what comes next.

Your support will help us build the programs, partnerships, leadership experiences, civic conversations, and opportunities that can prepare people to shape Miami’s next chapter.

Twenty-five years ago, Miami chose to believe that change was possible.

The next twenty-five years will depend on whether a new generation is prepared to lead, collaborate, act, and build something that lasts.