A French man, A Cuban woman: an American love story

 J-P (Jean-Pierre) Conte's parents, Isabel and Pierre Conte, left communist Cuba and war-torn France for a better life in the USA, forming a deep love for the country that gave them the freedom and opportunity to build their own futures. 

His father, Pierre - who went on to be drafted into the Korean war and become a highly-skilled tailor to the most successful men on Wall Street - left a broken and troubled France with the shadows of war not far behind him. He had vivid memories of Nazi occupation, including seeing his school playground used to round up the local Jewish population as a little boy. Seeking a future built on the freedoms and equalities America could offer, he left everything behind and worked hard to achieve success in his new home of 1950s Brooklyn. It was in America that he found not just freedom, and a country he admired for his whole life, but love.

Isabel, too, had not been born into the luxury of a peaceful, stable life. Her homeland of Cuba was ravaged first by the ugly brutality of fascism, then would later face the suffering, paranoia, and communism. Critical of the stringent and conservative gender roles on the island, she was determined to live her own life, her way. Filled with a bravery that would become a family trait, she took a birthday present ticket to the USA from an uncle, and never looked back. There, she met Pierre, and strove to teach her sons the precious value of freedom, the importance of ambition, and the vitality of kindness.

Their son, J-P, free of the restraints of class and communist oppression, would go on to dominate American business, funding himself through business school and college by working as a bouncer and waiter. Sharing the same drive as his parents, he worked hard with his father measuring and meeting with the tailoring companies clients, getting internships that allowed him to climb to the top of the corporate ladder, eventually establishing a career in private equity stretching across three decades and both coasts. But he never forgot where he came from: and the American Dream that got him there.

Determined not to pull up the ladder behind him at the top, J-P made sure his children knew the value of every dollar, and the importance of ambition, hard work and study. A strong believer in the same American Dream that inspired his mother and father fifty years ago, he decided to ensure that other Americans and immigrants like his parents had the same opportunity to thrive.

Today, J-P Conte, and his family, seek to provide the same equity and freedom to the next generation of Americans, including immigrants, and encourage the values of two immigrants who changed America forever.