LATINOS ON BOARDS 2021 THE ADVOCATES
DANIEL DIAZ LEYVA
MANAGING PARTNER AT DIAZ LEYVA GROUP Bill Sarno Courtesy Luis González
THE LEGAL VIEW
Daniel Diaz Leyva, a successful and respected Miami attorney, sees a correlation between an emerging minority community and representation at the board level. AS DANIEL DIAZ LEYVA paves the way for his Miami-headquartered law firm, Diaz Leyva Group, a firm well-established in the corporate and real estate practice areas, new challenges await. With hopes of scaling in the near future, his strategic plan includes more work in his current transactional space, expanding to support his owner-operator entrepreneurial clients with estate planning and immigration, and a new path toward litigation. He believes in a natural transition and growth pattern to business arising from serving as a trusted advisor to clients who organically request support in other areas of the law. “My relationship with my clients evolves over time as trust and confi-
dence is earned over the course of each mandate. Eventually, clients request our counsel in other areas outside the scope of our mandates because of our ability to trouble shoot and give honest, effective advice," says Diaz Leyva, who left one of the nation's largest law firms to open his own practice and has built a client portfolio that includes the nation's largest homebuilders, banks and wealthy Latin American immigrants. In addition, the new trajectory he envisions for Diaz Leyva Group responds to the fact that Hispanics are gaining in all sectors of life in the U.S., and he wants his practice to be a part of it.
“With more than 62 million Hispanics across the country, you need to be a reflection of the community you represent,” says Diaz Leyva. “More and more, companies are taking note of the growing population they are selling products and services to, and engaging and hiring more Hispanics to handle their legal work at firms like mine.” Having said that, it’s no secret that population growth among minorities is driving overall U.S. population growth. It’s just that these realities need to be felt across the spectrum, according to Diaz Leyva, including in corporate board membership. “As access to the board room grows to include an increasing number of Hispanic leaders, a trickle effect begins with a community a company serves reflected at all levels of that company. And it is this that I think will happen in the not-too-distant future.” A very personal project for Diaz Leyva is the creation of a foundation which will manifest his commitment to sustained mentoring and give him the chance to pay forward the opportunities he has received. While his agenda is ambitious, its underpinnings rest solidly on the inspiration of Cubans, like his family, who have lived in exile for more than 60 years. "Our generation has benefited significantly from our parents and grandparents’ generations," says Diaz Leyva. “They bore the brunt of the challenges – the need to integrate themselves into the community and learn the language.” Diaz Leyva’s grandfather, who was an attorney and editor of some of the largest newspapers in Cuba, worked as a janitor when he arrived in the U.S. "I draw a lot from those hardships that my parents and grandparents experienced. I live my life with gratefulness and appreciation of their sacrifices and the opportunities that were given to us because of the adversity they endured,” reflects Diaz Leyva. "This has helped shape my life, my perspective on the world, how I treat people and on how I build my business. It is a big part of who I am.” One of those opportunities was access to education. Diaz Leyva attended the University of Miami, majored in finance, and then obtained his law de-
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