Longtime Interest
Arthur R. Savage
A.R. Savage & Son, Tampa
President, CEO

Beyond work: Savage and his wife, Tracy, have four children under age 13.
On the sea: Savage owns a small, personal runabout and also takes the helm when the SS American Victory sails. The World War II-era ship is the American Victory Mariners Memorial and Museum Ship.
Maritime advocate: "It's how we all got here. It's what sustains us. We are the backbone of this country."
Cuba: In recent years, Savage's company began serving as an agent to Cuba as it charters vessels to import feed and fertilizer from Tampa.

Fifth-generation Floridian Arthur Savage is president of the Port of Tampa Maritime Industries Association, holds a master's license from the Coast Guard, serves as Tampa consul for Denmark and Norway, is dean of the consular corps in Tampa and has been knighted by Denmark's queen.

He's also opinionated. On the Cuba trade embargo: "A failed policy." On Florida's port security law: "Ill-conceived ... extremely adverse effects on employment and costs."

Savage, 45, the great-great-grandson of 19th-century Tampa legend Capt. James McKay, became president in 1997 of A.R. Savage & Son, founded at the end of World War II by his grandfather. Savage never had any doubt he would follow in the family trade, though "I had maybe some doubts I would be in the office because I actually started on the ships." Indeed, Savage spent five years sailing tugs, supply boats, crew boats and refrigerated ships in the waters of North and Central America and through the Panama Canal.

As a shipping agency, 26-employee A.R. Savage is tops in Tampa by ship volume and is first in overall tons as a freight forwarder, Savage says. It specializes in phosphate and phosphaterelated exports. The firm also has an intermodal shipping subsidiary.

He is bothered by Florida's port security law, which is touted by state leaders as a progressive measure that allowed Florida to obtain, ahead of less-prepared states, post 9/11 federal grants for security upgrades. Savage says the law's grantgetting benefits have been outweighed by its unwarranted strictures, blindness to differing situations at each port and additional layers of regulation. "We're the only state that has to comply with two different laws. We as an industry view that as our single biggest challenge right now in going out and attaining the opportunities we see."

Remedios Diaz Oliver All American Containers / President, Miami

Rapid Response
Arrival: 1961, from her native Cuba after she and other students were jailed by Castro for nine days following the Bay of Pigs invasion. Her parents owned business schools in Cuba. Started work at a packaging company that year.
Early distinction: 1968, first woman to get the U.S. "E" award for exporting excellence from then President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Founded: 1991, All American Containers, a supplier of glass, plastic and metal packaging, closures, tubes and bottles for soft drinks and other beverages, cosmetics, perfumes, chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

Edge: All American warehouses inventories of its products, allowing it to rapidly fill customer needs.

Appointed: 1991, by the first President Bush to the Advisory Committee for Trade Policies and Negotiations.

Growing: 2006 revenue will eclipse $125 million. Domestic growth has been particularly strong, with the company's business now 65-35 domestic-export, compared to 50-50 historically. "We're very happy. The best times will be coming shortly."

Politics: 2003, co-founder and executive board member of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee, which raises money for anti-Castro/proembargo congressional representatives and educates Congress on tyranny in Cuba. Now the largest Cuba-related PAC, it contributed $646,924 in the 2004 and 2006 election cycle to Democrat and Republican candidates for federal office, according to the Center for Responsive Politics

Custom Made
Peter Quinter, 42, always had an interest in cultures and languages. He even missed the start of his last year of high school to finish a live-abroad program in Greece. He also always wanted to be a lawyer.

No surprise then that he became a customs attorney, is board certified in international law and chairs law firm Becker and Poliakoff's customs and international trade practice. "In a typical day, I address concerns regarding food from Lebanon to whole bread from Brazil to cosmetics from England to clothing from Hong Kong to exports of high-tech items to India to litigation in Tianjin, China."

Notables
As executive dean, Joyce Elam, 57, runs FIU's College of Business Administration, ranked seventh in U.S. News and World Report's listing of business school undergrad programs with a focus on international business.

Daniel Berrebi, 47, founder of Paris-based ocean transport firm Unishipping, has moved to Miami to start BRB Yachts and soon will launch a fast-ferry service to Bimini in the Bahamas. , 57, runs FIU's College of Business U.S. News and World Report's listing of business school undergrad programs with a focus on international , 47, founder of Paris-based ocean transport firm Unishipping, has moved to Miami to start BRB Yachts and soon will launch a service to the Bahamas.

Tunnel Vision
Charlotte Gallogly
World Trade Center Miami, President

Collects: Ethnic arts and crafts and dolls from foreign countries. "I don't see myself retiring."
Frequent-flier miles: 1.5 million. "I give them away all the time."
Wish list: More trade show space in Miami.
Early business: A partner in a Burger King franchise.
Home: Coconut Grove.

Charlotte Gallogly's running late and is a bit breathless. The Miami-Dade County commissioners decided suddenly to take up a plan to contribute $600 million for a $1.2-billion tunnel that by 2013 would move trucks from the port to I-395, bypassing the current, messy trip through downtown Miami. She wanted to be there to support the plan. It passed. "It's fabulous," Gallogly exalted. "It's a green light for the tunnel."

Gallogly, 61, has been cheering on trade since 1987 when she became president of World Trade Center Miami, a non-profit with a $3-million annual budget. Its focus, since 1998, is its trade shows such as the IFE Americas-9th Americas Food and Beverage Show, the Air Cargo Americas and Seacargo Americas that will draw a combined 15,000 buyers and vendors to Miami next year.

A self-described "military brat" born on a now-shuttered Tennessee air base, Gallogly had a fascination with things foreign. "You know that expression 'far away places with strange-sounding names'? That's me." She spent part of her childhood overseas before coming to Miami-Dade in 1972 to join the county government. She ran Miami's economic development, international trade promotion, protocol and public information departments prior to taking the Trade Center post, seeing it as a natural progression for a "peacenik from the '60s." Trade engenders peace among nations, she says.

Ahead, she is studying the possibility of a trade show for arts and crafts from the Americas, a major interest of foreign governments. "International trade is the most exciting industry in the world," she says.