Arnold Donald, an African-American who grew up poor in the jazz capital and cultural melting pot of New Orleans to become chief executive of $48bn Carnival Corp, says diversity is the key to success in business.
“It’s critically important,” he tells TradeWinds during an interview in Miami Beach, about 25 minutes from his 120,000-employee company’s Miami headquarters.
“If you get a diverse group of people that are talented, focused on a common objective with work processes to work together, they will out-solution a homogeneous group of people every time,” he adds.
He says he has proven it multiple times, including at Carnival, with visible results.
“If you get those very different kinds of people who are individually talented working on a clear, common objective, they will create outstanding results. It’s really critical,” he says.
Donald says large companies must prosper for the community’s good, and the best way to ensure success is by fostering innovation through diverse thinking.
“If they don’t innovate, some other business comes along and makes them obsolete or passes them up and they fail,” he says.
Diverse thinking
“If you have diversity, you have a greater probability of diversity of thinking... It is just a core imperative for business that you have to purposefully engineer. It won’t happen on its own.”Diversity at Carnival
One need look no further than New York-listed Carnival’s executive leadership to see diversity within the company.
As a measure of ethnic and gender diversity, of 24 executives one-third are African-American, Hispanic or female.
They include chief procurement officer Julia Brown, who was listed as one of the top 100 most “Influential Blacks in Corporate America” by Savoy Magazine in 2014, among other accolades.
Ann Sherry, executive chairman of Carnival Australia, was awarded Australia’s centenary medal in 2001 and the Order of Australia in 2004.
Orlando Ashford, president of Holland America Line, is on the board of directors for the Executive Leadership Council, focused on developing global African-American leaders.
Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line, is the former president and chief executive of Cruise Lines International Association.
She was recognised by Moves magazine in their 2016 Power Women list of inspiring future female business leaders.
Arnaldo Perez joined Carnival Corp in July 1992 as assistant general counsel before moving up the ranks to acting general counsel and secretary in 1995 and general counsel in 1996.
Cuban-born, he was the first Carnival passenger to set foot in Cuba when in May 2016 the Fathom Adonia became the first US ship to reach its shores in 50 years.
Embracing change
The cruise industry’s workforce has become more diverse in recent years due to a growing talent pool, said Craig Johnson, founding partner of Flagship Management, a US-based recruitment firm focused on maritime and cruise.
"Years ago, the numbers just weren't there," he says.
Women were more interested in working for oil companies and large shipping companies in prior decades, but now they make up about 40% of cruise workers, he says.
Industry consolidation has also fostered greater diversity as cruise companies preserve the distinct cultures of the brands they acquire, he says.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Johnson vetted Carnival's take-over interests as its manager of maritime audit services.
"Diversity is important, but at the end of the day, companies still hire the best person for the job," he says.
