From Immigration to Innovation: Building a Business That Lasts | With Oscar Feldenkreis

This week's episode of Power & Impact is a wide-ranging conversation with Perry Ellis International CEO Oscar Feldenkreis about immigration, entrepreneurship, family legacy, and how businesses adapt across generations.  During our conversation, Oscar draws on his Cuban-American roots and a family history shaped by displacement and resilience to reflect on how that background continues to inform his definition of success, leadership, and responsibility. He traces the evolution of his business — from early efforts to serve the Hispanic consumer with culturally specific shirts like guayaberas, to building and re-positioning globally recognized brands such as Perry Ellis. Along the way, Oscar shares candid lessons from navigating public markets, activist investors, the decision to take the company private, and the importance of long-term institutional knowledge at the board level. Our conversation also explores how technology and AI are reshaping the apparel industry and why philanthropy remains inseparable from the Feldenkreis family's values. Woven throughout is a clear message about humility, hard work, and stewardship: building something that lasts means honoring the past while staying willing to change.