Connecting Giants and Unicorns joins WHX Miami to shape the future of healthtech – Refresh Miami

In Miami, we love a shiny object – rooftop launches, splashy conferences, founders pitching over espresso martinis in Brickell. But some of the city’s most important tech deals are being built far from the velvet rope, in rooms where corporations, startups, and investors sit down with one goal: make something happen.

That was the gap Sabina Shuminov set out to fill when she launched Connecting Giants and Unicorns (CGU) alongside co-founder Michael Burtov – who is also the Chief Innovation Officer at Nova Southeastern University – just over two years ago.

Her starting point was frustration.

“I kept showing up in these rooms, these bars, meeting a lot of cool people with big ideas,” Sabina Shuminov told Refresh Miami. “But every week, it felt like there was a new invention, and I kept asking myself: Okay, but how do you actually make money?”

Miami had energy and talent, but often too much noise and not enough connection between startups, mentors, and real customers.

Her answer was CGU, a platform designed to bring established corporations together with serious innovators.

“The idea is to have the giants – people who have done business for many years – to meet new, innovative businesspeople,” she said. “And then the magic happens.”

That model is now stepping onto a larger stage.

CGU has been named the official Content Partner for the Future X Stage at WHX Miami, one of the largest US and Latin America medical trade fairs happening June 17-19 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The company will help shape keynote talks, panels, pitch competitions, and programming focused on healthcare and emerging technology.

WHX Miami is expected to bring together healthcare executives, founders, investors, researchers, and hospital leaders from around the world, while remaining free to attend for many participants. Confirmed speakers already include Insightec CEO Maurice Ferré, the medtech entrepreneur behind companies later acquired by Stryker Corporation and GE Healthcare, along with Matthew Kroh, a globally recognized surgical innovator helping lead advanced surgical innovation efforts at Cleveland Clinic and Medtronic, and Claudia Zylberberg, a biotechnology entrepreneur and immunologist whose work spans cell and gene therapy manufacturing and AI-enabled healthcare infrastructure.

For Miami, it is another signal that our tech scene continues to grow up. For Shuminov, the partnership also carries personal meaning. A former paramedic who comes from a family of doctors, healthcare has long been close to home.

“Health has always been in my blood,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m all about making the world better.”

Her work with WHX has included trips to Dubai, where CGU helped showcase Florida innovation internationally. Those visits strengthened her belief that Miami is becoming part of a much bigger global network.

“Dubai has the same sense of inventing and creating the future,” she said. “The energy is the same as what we have in Miami.”

Both cities are international, ambitious, and increasingly important hubs for innovation. Miami, though, is carving out its own edge.

“The international people who are coming to Miami are getting more and more impressed by what they find,” Shuminov said. “A lot of people still come here for the party. But much more talent is serious and here to build.”

So sure, Miami is still fun. But beneath the surface, more innovators are showing up, more serious conversations are happening, and more bridges are being built between local ideas and global opportunity.

And thanks to CGU, some of Miami’s biggest breakthroughs may start with simply putting the right people in the same room.

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