Long before he became treasurer of the Coconut Grove Arts Festival, Flavio Carrillo was just a kid in the 1970s perched on the tenth floor of an office building on South Bayshore Drive, where his father worked in maintenance, peering down at the festival buzzing below. Decades later, he’d have a seat at the table helping run the whole thing. Talk about full circle.

And Carrillo’s connection runs deeper than childhood memories; it’s practically set in stone. His father helped craft the molds used to press the figural artwork still embedded in the walls of the Mayfair, the very building where the festival keeps its offices today. Not long ago, while going over financials at the festival’s Mayfair office, Flavio glanced up and spotted two of those same figures on the wall. His dad, most likely, shaped them by hand. “It’s such a surreal thing,” he says. You can’t script that kind of history.

Flavio is a delightful contradiction: a numbers guy with a musician’s soul. A first-generation Cuban American raised in Miami, he stacked up degrees in music from the University of Miami, business degrees from Florida International University (FIU), and a doctorate in finance from the University of Florida. Today he’s a full-time finance professor at FIU, runs the university’s Capital Markets Lab, and operates his own investment firm powered by machine-learning portfolio strategy. He is, by his own admission, a man who trusts data over hunches. When the board weighs a decision, Flavio quietly crunches the numbers and models every scenario so everyone can vote with clear eyes. “I want what’s best for the festival,” he says, “even if it’s sometimes contrary to what others may believe.”

But don’t let the spreadsheets fool you. Those music degrees weren’t a phase. Flavio still writes music professionally, collaborating with an artist in Brazil purely for the joy of it, and his love of the arts is the real deal. He was a devoted Coconut Grove Arts Festival-goer for years before his friend and CGAF Board Member Lilia Garcia nominated him for the board over a decade ago.

So, what keeps a 63-year-old festival feeling fresh? The artists, first and foremost. Their high caliber, Flavio says, is the hook. More than a thousand artists apply each year for a few hundred spots, so the ones who make the cut are simply the best at what they do, with something for every taste. Then there’s the setting, which he happily calls perhaps the most beautiful footprint of any outdoor art festival in the country: right on the bay, in bohemian Coconut Grove, in the sweet-spot weather of February. That Grove magic, he insists, exists nowhere else in Miami.

What would surprise the average visitor is the sheer, dizzying choreography behind a three-day event: permits, unions, a hundred moving parts that all have to click. Much of that magic comes down to the deep relationships the organization has built with its artists over the years.

Flavio is proudest of everything that happens the other 362 days a year: the scholarships, the mentorship, the emerging artist programs. He dreams of expanding it all, especially helping young artists crack the business side of a creative career so they can actually make a living doing what they love, just like the festival’s seasoned veterans who travel show to show.

And really, that’s what gets him. Even when an artist doesn’t make a sale, they light up just because someone stopped to ask about their work. “They’re selling a part of themselves,” he says. “It shows a lot of passion.”

Off the clock, that passion turns homeward. A proud father of three, he’s especially tuned in these days to his son, a freshman studying jazz vocal at the University of Miami. And when Flavio finally steals a moment to unwind? You’ll find him out at a sandbar off the river. The beer is optional. But between teaching, the firm, and the festival, the laptop, apparently, is not.