Top Stories » Headlines » People

Monique Hamaty-Simmonds, CEO and president of Tortuga Rum Cake Co./Tortuga Imports Inc., has been honored by the Florida International University (FIU) Alumni Association with the Charles E. Perry Young Alumni Visionary Award. It was presented to her at the 10th Annual Torch Awards Gala, held March 19 at the JW Marriott Marquis in Miami.

The Young Visionary Award annually recognizes a FIU graduate who has made significant contributions to his or her field of endeavor early on in their career.

A 1996 FIU graduate in Business Administration, Hamaty-Simmonds is a second-generation entrepreneur. Her father, Robert Hamaty, and his wife, Carlene, started Tortuga Rum Co. in Grand Cayman, B.W.I., in 1984; they later introduced the Tortuga Rum Cake, baked from a generations-old family recipe. As a teenager and throughout college, Hamaty-Simmonds learned the business while working with her father in his office during holiday breaks and school vacations. In 1997, she and her husband, Marcus Simmonds, opened Tortuga Imports — also known as the Tortuga Rum Cake Co. — in Miami to bring Tortuga’s “taste of the Islands” to the American market.

At 39 years of age, Hamaty-Simmonds heads a thriving import business and international gourmet food company.

DiversityBusiness.com, a multicultural internet site, has named Tortuga Rum Cake Co. to its list of the Top 100 Women-Owned and Diversity-Owned Businesses in Florida. The company also has been recognized by Inc. magazine as one of the Top 5000 fastest-growing, private U.S. companies for four consecutive years. In May, Hamaty-Simmonds will be inducted into the FIU College of Business Administration’s Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame.

For more information about Tortuga Rum Cake Co., visit www.tortugarumcakes.com.