Hi Lisa, welcome to the Leaders Lab.
Hello Ken, it's an honor and pleasure to be here with you today. I can't wait to dive in.
On your backstory, maybe you can just start us with early career, where you grew up, wherever you want to start. Lay it on us.
Okay, wow. All right, well I'm gonna try to make this as concise as possible. It's been a long life and a long career. I was born and raised in a very small fishing town in Massachusetts, Gloucester, Massachusetts, the oldest seaport in the country. Most of the kids I went to school with — it was an Italian and Portuguese town — pretty much everyone made their living fishing, at least all the men. Women didn't when I was a kid, but they certainly do now. My parents were always in the hospitality business, so I always say I started in hospitality when I was six years old working in our coffee shop. I lived in a town on the water, so I found it very serendipitous that I ended up spending almost 40 years in the cruise industry, hospitality on the water. My life has really been a parallel life in terms of being attracted to the sea and industry and business on the water. I started in the cruise business completely by accident in 1983, but I started in the company in 1985. I started in the travel business in 1983, and then I started at the lowest level of sales, calling door to door as a door-to-door salesman. Thirty years later, I made my way to president and CEO of Celebrity Cruises. I had a lot of different positions along the way. My career was wonderful and I learned the business inside out, upside down. And then I finally left after almost 40 years.
Wow. I'm guessing, maybe incorrectly, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking 1985, cruise industry, we're just barely post-Love Boat days, right? Was there a lot of women leaders, a lot of female leadership? I've got to think that had to be a male-dominated industry for the most part.
Really recently has there honestly started to be some women leadership, but no, I grew up in a completely male-dominated industry, not only on the corporate side but especially on the operational side and especially on the ships. Everybody was a man. Now, in my career, I'm a sales and marketing girl, so there was a lot of gender balance in sales and marketing. I really didn't notice the gender imbalance when I was in sales and marketing because I wasn't hanging around with the executives. I was doing my thing, and the people I was surrounded by were very balanced in terms of gender. Only when I entered operations in 2005 did it really start to hit me that it was all men. I went into a leadership position at Celebrity at the time in 2005, and I was the only woman in the operation.
In the 20 years prior, when you were in sales and marketing, you weren't in leadership at all? Was it mostly individual contributor roles or were you leading within sales?
No, I spent 17 years in sales in progressive leadership roles. I rose through the ranks. The only job I ever wanted, which is interesting, Ken, I'll tell you, I loved sales. I'm pretty good at it. I say no matter what we do, we're selling, and it was a tremendous way to start my career. But I only had one aspiration, and that was to be the head of sales. I was waiting for my boss to retire. I had risen through the ranks in sales, done all the jobs, and I was waiting for him to decide he didn't want to work anymore so I could get his job. The reality is I never got his job. I was moved from sales into marketing before that happened, and that was my first change from sales. That was one of many moves: from sales to marketing, to hotel operations, to marine and hotel operations, then to CEO.
Did you have mentors around you that, even if it was unspoken, recognized your potential and intentionally made those moves on your behalf or shoved you in certain directions? Because I know we've done that a lot in corporate leadership, where sometimes I'd take the thing they least wanted to do and put them in it. If this person has potential to become a GM but they're missing the sales component, let's get them into sales because we may know better than they do what they're capable of. Did you get some of that?
Yes, I did. I always say I had advocates. The gentleman that actually moved me from sales into marketing really believed that high-potential people should move around the company and learn the different aspects because it makes them a more well-rounded professional and gives them greater potential for advancement. I didn't realize that. One of the lessons I learned along the way is that you should believe in yourself as much as other people believe in you, because I obviously didn't. I thought my career was going to begin and end in sales in the company, and the reality was very different because I had advocates — who were all men, by the way — who moved me all around the company and ultimately into the president and CEO role. I was the first woman to actually hold three different positions in our company: first woman to be Senior Vice President of Hotel Operations, first woman to be Executive Vice President of all operations, hotel and marine, and then the first woman to become president and CEO of one of the brands within our corporation.
Now in your run as CEO, that encompassed COVID, and I can't think of an industry that was more impacted. You and I were just talking about something beforehand where you had just launched an all-women cruise about a week prior to literally everything shutting down. What was that? I cannot imagine a more challenging CEO job. I'm sure you guys had CNN and everybody else calling you, asking for quotes. You had ships out at sea. Tell me about that.
Yeah, it was crazy. So, you know, I have my book, Making Waves... Go ahead.
No, your pause — when I see it, because no one can see it, and the pause and even the way you're holding your head right now, it's almost like PTSD.
I know. Well, listen, I completely understand why you want to take me back there, but honestly, it really is PTSD. My book Making Waves, the first chapter is 'Sailing Through the Storm,' and what I say right up front is I went from the highest of highs in my career, which was March 8th, 2020, International Women's Day. The bridge was entirely manned by women, first time ever in our industry, first and last time ever in our industry, and we were the only brand that could do it because of all the focus we had on gender balance. Every other operational area of the ship was led by a woman on that cruise. Our brand had just launched the Edge series, which was transformational. We had transformed the financial performance of the brand. And here I am standing in the Grand Plaza during that cruise, celebrating with all the women and all the guests. It was incredible. I remember thinking it was a mic drop moment: if I drop the mic right now and walk away, I will have accomplished more than I ever thought in my entire life and career. I got off the ship midweek, went back to the office, went home for the week on Friday, and on Sunday, March 15th, we made the decision to voluntarily shut down. We were closed for business for 15 months. I went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows in my career, something I never in my wildest dreams would imagine — that our business would just shut down within a span of 72 hours. I will never forget that. It was quite a time. What I will say about being a leader is that you really figure out if you're a leader during the worst of times, because during good times, pretty much anybody can be a leader. It's really during the worst of times that you have to build the muscle of all the things you've learned and maybe didn't focus on before, during the depths of despair when you don't know if you're ever going to get back into business.
I can so relate to that, and that's why I wanted you to go there — not to bring up the worst part of your career, but it was probably the biggest leadership turning point. First of all, on a personal side, you've got family, COVID is happening, all the emotion around that. Then you've got everything being tested: revenue, employee reductions, the stock price, literally everything that could happen happening at once. Other than Bill Gates, no one saw it coming in the way that it came and shut everything down. What did you learn through that? What did you learn about your leadership, your team, what were some of the big lessons?
Well, what was interesting during that time is we kept thinking it was only going to be a few months. When we shut down in March, we thought we'd be back in the summer. When the summer came and went, we thought we'd be back by the holidays. When the holidays came and went, we thought we'd be back by the end of first quarter. It just went on and on. What did I learn? A woman asked me something — I know her very well, she's very high up at Korn Ferry — and she asked me, 'Lisa, what does it feel like for someone who prides themselves on being in control and always wants to be in control, how does it feel to be completely out of control?' That was a very profound and perceptive question. I never thought of it that way. When you're a leader, a president and CEO of a multi-billion dollar business, building ships, making decisions, figuring out how to launch them and price your brand, you feel like you have control over your business. Things happen on any given day, weather and such, but a pandemic and shutting down tested every part of me. I'm driven, I hold people accountable, we have aggressive financial targets and metrics, guest satisfaction metrics, safety metrics. You're driving toward those every day, and then all of a sudden nothing's happening. No business is coming in, no ships, no crew — it took us almost a year to get all of our crew home. I had to put those parts of me aside that were probably the strongest in what I practiced every day and ramp up the empathy, the inspiration, the motivation, instilling hope in people, trying to keep them confident and positive when everything was so negative, even when I wasn't any of those things on any given day. I would wake up every day and talk to myself: 'All right, you've got to make sure 20,000 people feel like this is going to end and we're all going to be fine.' I had to manage myself differently, dial down all those driven things and dial up all those empathetic and caring things because people needed something different from me. Leaders have to understand at any given time, what do people need from me today? I built those muscles pretty well over 15 months. I remember getting back on the ships after we finally got back into service, and the crew — oh my goodness, Ken, it was unbelievable. So many of them came up to me with tears in their eyes and said, 'Thank you for bringing us back, thank you for ensuring we got our jobs back so we could provide for our families, and thank you for giving us hope for 15 months that we would be able to come back.' That felt really good. Just like all the great financial results and accolades the brand and I got, that probably for me was the thing that made me feel the best as a leader and made me feel like I did well during that time.
Yeah, I gotta think when any leader is reflecting back on their career, if it's a few years from now and you're looking in the rearview mirror, it is going to be those times — the people, the connection times. The third quarter results from fiscal year '22 were important in the moment, but long term, there were a whole lot of quarters. Tell me about how did you get the nod to be the president and chairwoman of the FIFA committee for the World Cup in 2026?
Well, I've always done a decent job of making connections and building a network. I always felt it was important for me personally within the community, whether through philanthropic things or organizations. I felt it was good for me personally and really good for our brand and our business. I always tried to be available for other women thinking about their own careers and how they could advance. I'm not the only woman who grew and achieved something in an industry that a lot of women hadn't been able to accomplish yet. I remember having dinner with a woman who had asked a gentleman I worked with if I would have dinner with her because she was trying to think through her own career. I enthusiastically said yes, and she was terrific. We ended up staying connected. Lo and behold, as I was leaving the company, she was the chief of staff for a person who was an integral part of the community leadership for the World Cup, and they were looking for a CEO. She reached out to me, sent me a text, and said, 'You have five minutes.' She and I talked, and then I talked to a lot of other people. What was interesting about the FIFA World Cup role, which is very similar to all the other things I did in my career, is I don't know anything about soccer. I always say everything I know about soccer or football I learned from Ted Lasso. I was not a subject matter expert, nor was I for most of the positions I held throughout my career. But what I was was a corporate CEO who ran a serious business. There are 11 host cities around the country and 16 in North America hosting these events. Make no mistake, it's a big business. You have to raise a lot of money. It's a logistical challenge with transportation, security, 10,000 volunteers. I led 20,000 people and a P&L, and great guest experiences. For all the things I had done in my career that were very similar to what I needed to do there, they offered the role to me. Like so many other roles I took on, I said, 'I'll hire smart people that know more about soccer and all these different components than I do, and I'll put together a strong team, and they'll help me be successful.' That's the model I've had throughout my career.
What does that ramp-up look like right now? You guys are already two years out, you're in the thick of it at this point?
Oh yeah, yeah, it's a big deal, and we're in the throes of it. It's about 18 months now. It was almost three years when I first started talking to people, and time flies. Everybody's in the throes of organizing this — all the host cities, FIFA, and even the federal government, because there's a lot the federal government is going to have to do to help us. This is a monumental task for the United States, 11 major cities that cross the country.
I can't even think of the logistics when you're thinking of traffic patterns, crowd flow, all this stuff that seemingly is way over my head. But if I was in there, I'd be hiring people that knew what they were talking about. It's probably going to be 700 or 800,000 people in for the Miami matches alone, and that's going to go as far north as Orlando and as far west as Tampa. All the airports are going to be full, all the hotels are going to be full. People are going to want to go to Disney and Universal and come to matches and FanFest. You have to think about how these people are going to move around and how we're going to do this the best way possible.
Every one of these cities already has traffic problems. Imagine when you bring in another 700,000 to 800,000 people over a five or six week period of time.
