Fred Sainz, the son of Cuban immigrants who learned English from watching Sesame Street, credits his parents for instilling in him what he calls an “immigrant work ethic.” Add to that “incurable optimist” and you have the vice president of public affairs for the San Diego Convention Center Corp.

Convention Center CEO Carol Wallace speaks well of Sainz: “Time after time, his expertise and ability to be prepared for the unexpected have kept the center one step ahead of the competition.”

His daily schedule may explain his energy. He rises at 4:15 each morning (without an alarm clock, which he calls “bizarre”) and goes to a gym most days. That habit developed eight years ago when he lost 115 pounds in “a wholesale life change.” A friend was working for a pharmaceutical company that made medications for diabetics. “I asked her what type person got diabetes, and she looked at me and said, ‘you.’”

Sainz started at the Convention Center in 1998, left in 2001 to be CAO of the Waitt Family Foundation and returned to the center in 2002.

A graduate of George Washington University, his first job after college was as advance representative for George W. Bush when he was vice president. When he was elected president, Sainz moved with him as a staff assistant.

“When we lost,” he says, Sainz went to work for the National Republican Senatorial Committee and in 1994 was director of planning for the Republican Convention in San Diego. “After the circus left town,” he says, he stayed. He went to work for then Mayor Susan Golding and became active in the Convention Center expansion effort.

Sainz lives with his 13-year-old Scottish terrier (he describes him as a “terrierist”) named Norman. In free time, he says, “I travel a lot, a lot, a lot, both for the job and pleasure.”