For months, they quietly advised the White House in hopes of shaping a new policy towards the communist-run nation.
"A lot of what the president announced is what we, and others in Miami, have been doing for a long time," said Felice Gorordo, co-founder of Roots of Hope, a non-partisan group of Cuban-American university students and young professionals.

Their mission: closer contact with the island to build mutual understanding - a point of view that's often at odds with their parents and grandparents.

But they offer much more than policy advice. Obama is counting on this organization, and others like them, to help pave the way for his new policy that includes measures from promoting private sector entrepreneurship, to modernizing the island's telecommunications infrastructure and restoring access to U.S. banking services.

"There is a clear understanding in the White House that politically they are going to have to focus on and cultivate the younger generation of Cuban-Americans who are mobilized and out there supporting the president's decision," said Frank Mora, a Cuba scholar at Miami's Florida International University, and a former top Pentagon official for Latin America in the Obama administration.