Arsht started her career in the legal profession, starting with a job at Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell in 1966. She made her mark by being the first woman in the airline industry’s Cargo Government Relations and Property departments. After founding her own title company in Washington, DC, she returned to Miami in 1996 to run her family business, TotalBank. Under her leadership, it expanded from four locations to 14. In 2007, she sold the bank to Banco Popular Español, S.A. for $300 million.
Why They Made the Worthy 100: Arsht has worked tirelessly in recent years to promote Latin America’s strategic role and combat the threat of extreme heat. She’s contributed to this cause financially and through vision and hands-on involvement. She has also been a very generous philanthropist. In 2020, she gave $5 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art so it could build its first fully paid internship program. In April 2022, Arsht gave $11 million to fund paid internships at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, Fl. This gift transforms the Center’s internship program into a fully paid one, creating greater and equal access to hands-on professional experience in arts management and administration. Just this November, Arsht gave the Smithsonian $10 million to advance climate resilience research and education. The donation will fund the establishment of a center for resilience and sustainability within the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama.
