Sunny E. Fraser was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic of American parents. At age three, her parents decided to move back to the United States. Her mother was from the colder Northeast climate of York, Pennsylvania and her father was born in the South in Jacksonville, Florida and raised in the tropical climate of Cuba. Since her father wanted to finish college and live in the cold climate and her mother, after attending University of Miami and graduating from University of Florida, wanted to live in the warm climate; her parents decided to settle the argument with a simple dart on the map. Like any man with a dart in his hand, her father aimed for the bulls-eye and her family landed in the Midwest in a small-town outside of Iowa City, Iowa, population 1,010. Her father graduated from the University of Iowa and continued with his entrepreneurial spirit by starting a restaurant franchise. Sunny grew up in the food business. Her family was very cultured, creative, artistic and open-minded and encouraged it with her and her sister. Her parents loved travelling, dining out and always promoted exploration. Fortunately, Sunny was innately gifted with a sophisticated palate, choosing lobster or filet over a hot dog as a young child. She also preferred the stinky cheeses, like Roquefort over an American single. She hated ketchup, but loved Hollandaise. She definitely had some bizarre taste preferences for a young girl.
Sunny currently resides in Miami, Florida, but is California dreamin’ daily. She and her accomplice, Chef Superdave, are actively looking for the right vineyard property acquisition opportunity in order to make the big move. Sunny is a Nationally Board Certified Counselor (NCC) and licensed in the State of Florida as a Mental Health Counselor (LMHC). Although she does not practice, she keeps her licensure current and active.
She has an extensive background in executive management and successful relationship building through communication and entertainment in her various roles as a banking executive, CEO, licensed mental health counselor and professional guardian. She received her formal education at the University of Florida, where she earned a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Psychology and interned at the North Cental AID Network as a counselor. After graudation, she decided to expand her horizons by visiting her birth country, Dominican Republic, for several months. There, she was introduced to the National Director of Virology and began voluntarily lecturing people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS on AIDS awareness and education. Sunny has always been a socially conscious person, wanting to make a difference by helping people. Not long after she returned to the United States, she began her career as a Professional Guardian at Guardianship Program of Dade County, the largest public guardian in the State of Florida for indigent adults deemed physically or mentally incapacitated in Miami-Dade County, Florida with no one willing, able or qualified to act on their behalf.
While in this role, she began a Masters program at Barry University. She worked full-time in the day as a Professional Guardian and attended graduate school full-time at night. During this time, she also interned in the evenings as a therapist at a psychiatrist’s office evaluating and assessing patients, as well as running a group to prevent recidivism for men, who were white-collar felons with a dual diagnosis of substance abuse.
After graduating from Barry University with a Dual Masters of Science in Mental Health Counseling and Marriage Family Therapy, she continued practicing therapy in the evenings and maintained her role as a Professional Guardian, now supervising the other Professional Guardians in the organization. She was setting up her private practice when the opportunity presented itself to become the Executive Director/CEO of Guardianship Program of Dade County. By age 30, Sunny was a CEO. In this role, she was successful in public relations by creating a more positive image for this professional guardian program through successful charitable event planning and relationship building with donors. She was also able to reduce the cost of handling a guardianship on a flat budget and proved her executive management abilities. However, on her 10th anniversary at the organization, she resigned to the Board of Directors due to burnout.
With no future plans in mind other than time-off, this Type A Personality decided to take an unlikely direction by choosing to stop and breathe for a moment in order to recover from her five full-time hats and all the enormous responsibilities attached. She was committed to a six-month sabbatical, but was surprised to find that she was in high demand with phenomenal job offers almost daily for other executive positions, such as CEO opportunities, Development Director of some large non-profits and even an executive opportunity for a boutique bank.
After four months of pursuit, Sunny accepted the role of Vice President/ Fiduciary Relationship Officer at the boutique bank in Miami, where she utilized her background in probate and guardianship to lead her effort in growing and expanding their fiduciary business to all of their markets. She was very successful in that role and was promoted, in a short time, to Vice President/Regional Fiduciary Development Manager. She grew this business by a nearly a forty percent growth rate in only six months.
After two years of proving her ability to succeed in ruthless corporate America, Sunny decided that it was time to be her own boss and utilize all her talents, drive and motivation to follow her own passions. Sunny has always been active in many professional and charitable organizations. She reaps tons of pleasure from mentoring and helping people. One of her best accomplishments was rescuing her two pedigree-challenged poochies, Tyson and Kayla, after their abused mom died when they were only one day old. She woke to bottlefeed them every couple hours while working fulltime by day and attending graduate school at night. Although Sunny was sleep-deprived for that year, her four-legged babies have provided her with ten years and counting of unconditional love and enjoyment. She also loves to travel, collect art from her travels and entertain people, especially through food and wine, as well as swim, walk and dance for her health.
After years of being a spectacle through entertaining clients and friends with extravagant parties and wine pairing dinners both in the home and at restaurants, she decided it was time to follow a dream, take a chance and utilize her strong networking, entertaining and business skills, along with Chef Superdave’s ability to command a room with his remarkable wine pairing and creative culinary skills, to open Sunbox Eleven, Inc. And so was born…Sunbox Eleven Winery & Performance Dining, where her responsibilities include operating, marketing, playing entertainer and hostess, being a co-winemaker and still she aspires to continue mentoring and inspiring young minds as much as possible.