60 years of doing business in South Florida 

Kaufman Rossin CEO reflects on the evolution of the firm and the local community

I used to think the nickname “Magic City” was given to Miami by a PR firm somewhere around the 1970s, trying to build excitement about the glamour of the place. Turns out it goes much farther back. The phrase Magic City was coined by a freelance writer hired by Henry Flagler in the 1890s to promote the remote outpost’s beauty and economic opportunity. And the city has proven itself worthy of the name many times over, evolving in response to political and cultural forces, and growing in economic power.

When Jim Kaufman and Jay Rossin founded their new accounting firm in Miami in December 1962, the city was a very different place than the one we know today. The population of Dade County (Miami -Dade’s name until 1997) had just crossed one million people that year; now it’s about 2.7 million. When Kaufman Rossin was founded, only about 10% of Miami residents were foreign-born – now more than half have migrated from other countries.

Miami’s magic has drawn a diverse community.

The local community grew slowly at first, and then began to boom, fueled by international and domestic migration to Miami. Transformation began in the 60s, when the Cuban revolution changed the dynamics of the region and led hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles – and eventually other immigrants – to call South Florida home in the years to come.

In the 70s, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce worked to develop international commerce with Miami at the center, coordinating trade delegations from Europe, Asia and the Caribbean, and establishing the Greater Miami Foreign Trade Zone in 1976. In the 1980s, when I arrived here from Indiana, the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Beacon Council were established to create a dedicated county-wide marketing approach for tourism and economic development.

Most recently, since the pandemic, today’s Miami has begun to glow in new ways. According to the Financial Times,

“In the 12 months from July 1, 2020, far more Americans moved to Florida than any other state — 220,890 of them. A migration of people can change a place, like California after the Dust Bowl or the Midwest after the Great African American Migration. But what’s happening in Miami is more than a migration of people. It’s also a migration of money. Billionaire Carl Icahn moved his hedge fund office from New York. In 2020, [Miami’s top real estate group] sold more than $1.2bn in homes, more than any other large residential real-estate team in the country. In 2021, [they] closed more than $2bn.”

Real estate and tourism, Miami’s economic drivers since Flagler’s days, have been joined by dynamic healthcare and technology sectors. Like much of the country, service industries have grown dramatically in Florida. And now that hybrid and remote work have become the norm, the financial sector – banking, hedge funds, private equity firms – has embraced South Florida’s friendly business environment, lack of state income tax, and fantastic weather.

As the community evolved, the firm matched it.

During those first 30 years, Kaufman Rossin moved from its first home on Biscayne Boulevard to its headquarters in Coconut Grove, giving us space to expand our team, take on new clients, and foster our “joy at work” culture. In 1991, a decision to look north and open an office in Boca Raton proved fortuitous: just one year later, Hurricane Andrew devastated South Miami-Dade County. We recovered from the storm and then, in 1996, expanded our footprint again, this time to Broward County with an office in Fort Lauderdale. In the years since, we’ve added offices around the country and the world, including New York, the Ivory Coast and India. And we moved our Coconut Grove headquarters to a beautiful new site in … Coconut Grove.

Miami is larger, more diverse, and economically more powerful than it was 60 years ago.

Our community has endured hurricanes and riots; it has thrived through boom and bust. Our firm has grown and diversified along with the community, as we’ve expanded our Kaufman Rossin family with talented employees from all backgrounds.

As the business climate has evolved, our clients’ needs have changed. Our professionals have developed new services to meet them. Our consulting practices now include sophisticated risk advisory, business consulting, and forensic advisory groups among others. We’ve established new entities to help clients with wealth management, insurance and fund administration. We’ve partnered with community organizations, including the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, Beacon Council, Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance and Business Development Board of Palm Beach County to support the local business community and promote economic development.

And it’s working – Florida was recently named the nation’s fastest-growing state for the first time since 1957, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and the GDP is outstripping other large states, according to Tom Hudson, WLRN’s Senior Economics Editor. “In the first three months of the year,” he wrote “the national economy grew by 2%. Florida grew by an annual rate of 3.5% — a sizable difference when talking about hundreds of billions of dollars of activity. And Florida’s growth was the fastest among the biggest states like California, New York and Texas.”

When I moved from Indiana to Miami to join Kaufman Rossin in 1984, I knew I had found my home. Thirty-nine years later, I’m grateful to lead this firm as CEO, continuing the vision Jim and Jay had for a people-focused, joyful culture that puts employees first. Now, as our firm celebrates 60 years of doing business in South Florida, it brings me immense joy to see how far our community, our clients and our company have come. I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Blain Heckaman is CEO of Kaufman Rossin, one of the top 100 CPA and advisory firms in the U.S. He can be reached at bheckaman@kaufmanrossin.com