Christine Duffy was rejected as a flight attendant. Now, she runs Carnival Cruise Line

When she was a teenager, Christine Duffy dreamed of being a flight attendant. But that career goal was squashed when Pan American Airways rejected her for being too short.

“This was in the ‘80s, that was a very glamorous job at an international airline,” she said. “But you had to be 5’4’’ to be a Pan Am flight attendant. And I was not!”

Duffy went on to wear many hats in the travel industry — from receptionist to CEO of a business travel company and from lobbyist in Washington to her current position as president of Carnival Cruise Line, one of South Florida’s most iconic brands. She took an non-traditional, sometimes risky path that led her to the top of the cruise industry.

Duffy took the helm at Carnival Cruise Line in 2015, overseeing consistently climbing booking numbers through 2019. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020 — the largest crisis in the history of cruising. The industry had to deal with fallout from

superspreader events on ships and crew members being stranded at sea without pay.

Duffy’s Carnival Cruise Line was the first to get all of its ships running after ships were barred from sailing for over a year and then bounced back with record sales in 2022.

Duffy is outgoing, warm and repeatedly described as “fun” by her colleagues. Industry experts say she’s behind a Carnival culture shift that has made its corporate headquarters a more desirable place to work and has connected with customers more than some of her predecessors.

“It was the ‘fun ships’ but not the fun place to work — now it seems like it’s a fun ship, a fun place to work and a very profitable company,” said Peter Ricci, who is the director of the hospitality-management program at Florida Atlantic University and has long worked with job recruiters at cruise lines to place his students.

“Carnival had a reputation for being very bureaucratic and political. I’ve been in this business for many years and I’ve met many of the top executives there and I really think it is a new day at Carnival. I think she’s the most vibrant, visible leader Carnival has had since the founder,” he said, referring to Ted Arison, who founded Carnival and is considered the inventor of modern cruising.

Duffy, 61, is one of the few women leading the world’s largest cruise brands, but she doesn’t focus on her gender when discussing leadership. She was rising in the travel industry when there weren’t many female business leaders to look up to. Her husband of 40 years stopped working when Duffy’s career took off and was a stay-at-home dad to their two children in the early 2000s.

“All of the opportunities I’ve had were given by men, I’ve always been hired by men — men that have believed in me, trusted me, mentored me,” she said. “I know that it is an inspiration for other women to see me in this role, especially when I go onto the ships and talk to the women working there.”

She adds: “I try not to just make it about women though. We should be speaking to everyone. Me being successful in the role and in the company is because we’ve got a great team and we’re doing a great job.”

Duffy said she has crafted her team based on diversity — not only demographic, but diversity of business experience. Duffy’s own background and broad experience at various levels in the travel industry got her hired at Carnival. She worked entry-level roles as a receptionist and a travel agent and never received a college degree.

“I’m somebody who totally started at the bottom and worked my way up. I’ve had a lot of different experiences, I think it’s what makes me very empathetic as a leader, because I’ve done a lot of those front-line jobs,” she said.

That caught the eye of Arnold Donald, the previous CEO of Carnival Corporation, the parent company of Carnival Cruise Line and nine other cruise lines.

“What I saw in Christine was a lot of diversity,” Donald said in an interview. “Yes, she’s a woman, but she’s also a woman who thrived in different types of situations. Her background and training [are] different from a lot of people you come across — one thing is that she doesn’t have a college degree, so what? Someone who has been able to achieve everything she has without a college degree, they think differently.”

When asked what she does outside of work, Duffy struggled to answer. She said the job is practically a 24/7 operation and she doesn’t get much time to herself. But when she does, she visits her two adult children who live in Orlando and Philadelphia and her first granddaughter, who is 18 months old.

Of all the cruises that she has been on, her favorite memory was her first voyage after being appointed president: A New Year’s cruise on the Carnival Breeze.

“It was so incredible to think that I was going to be running this company and that this is what we do,” she said. “And just the joy and meeting people — it was really an incredible celebration. And my family was with me, so it was special.”

Her favorite Carnival ship? “That’s like asking who is your favorite kid!” she joked, before admitting it was the brand new Carnival Celebration.

Orlando to France to Philly

Duffy was born in Orlando in 1961. Her Sicilian grandfather owned citrus orchards in Central Florida. Her mother, a native of France, moved the family to her home country when Duffy was 2 years old. She became bilingual and bicultural — which she described as a kickstarter for her curiosity and appetite for travel.

Several years later, the family relocated to Philadelphia. Her father sold Singer sewing machines, which led her to her future husband — their dads worked together as salesmen and they grew up in the same neighborhood.

When becoming a flight attendant didn’t pan out, Duffy went to Walnut Street in downtown Philadelphia to look for a job at what was then a cluster of travel agencies. With a high-school diploma, she was hired as a receptionist at Rosenbluth Travel. She then became a travel agent at McGettigan, a business and events travel agency, and climbed the ranks to chief operating officer. In 2001, that company was acquired by Maritz Travel, another business travel-focused firm.

In 2004, Duffy was the first woman named as president and CEO of Maritz in the company’s more than 100-year history. The promotion prompted a move from Philadelphia to the company’s headquarters in St. Louis. While living in Missouri, she crossed paths with Donald who at that time was CEO of Monsanto and later became the head of Carnival Corporation.

From lobbying in D.C. to Carnival Cruise Line

Duffy’s transition to the cruise industry arose out of the great recession. Duffy was CEO at Maritz in the late 2000s, when companies started tightening their budgets and technology was beginning to enable virtual meetings, crushing travel businesses such as Maritz. She said some of her biggest clients were pressured by then-President Barack Obama’s comments to cut back on expenses such as trips to Las Vegas.

“At Maritz, we were all corporate meetings and events, and everybody started canceling. It was the financial crisis and no one wanted to be seen taking trips,” she said. “So I got very engaged — I got connected with the U.S. Travel Association, and we went to Washington and began, I wouldn’t say lobbying as much as advocating, for the travel industry, and why travel matters across every congressional district in this country.”

Her efforts caught the attention of Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), the cruise industry’s lobbying group in Washington, and she ended up as the new president and CEO.

“Sometimes, it’s not about just going up the ladder. It’s about doing something that exposes you to something that’s very different and outside your comfort zone,” she said. “I wasn’t a public affairs or policy person. I was CEO of Maritz and I could have stayed CEO at Maritz. People thought I was crazy, but if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be here.”

At CLIA, Duffy got experience in dealing with cruise-ship disasters. She led the industry response to the 2012 capsizing of the Costa Concordia off the coast of Italy. Thirty-four people were killed. In 2013, a fire in the engine room on the Carnival Triumph knocked out the ship’s power, sending passengers and crew members drifting at sea for four days with no power and no working toilets. Duffy said they introduced new regulations and a more stringent safety standard that cruise lines committed to and also introduced a passenger bill of rights in an attempt to clearly outline what passengers can count on from cruise lines.

As Duffy navigated crises at CLIA, an opening was on the horizon at Carnival Cruise Line — former President Gerry Cahill announced he would retire in 2014. Donald had recently taken the reins of Carnival Corporation, succeeding Micky Arison, the son of Carnival’s founder, and approached Duffy about throwing her hat in the ring.

Internally, Duffy is known for being upbeat and personable. She describes herself as a “glass half full” type of leader who beefed up the company’s HR department as well as its internal and external communications departments.

Externally, Duffy is known for frequenting the ships often and engaging with customers. She has integrated celebrities and household brands on Carnival ships — including Shaquille O’Neal (Carnival’s “chief fun officer”) and restaurant concepts from celebrity chefs such as Guy Fieri and Emeril Lagasse.

Duffy says she tries to bring empathy to crises.

“In this job, you have to make very tough decisions, and we deal with serious issues,” she said, mentioning layoffs during the COVID-19 pandemic, managing a workforce of 40,000 people with 120 nationalities, pleasing shareholders and dealing with regulators, environmental compliance and health inspectors.

“I can be very serious, and I can be tough,” she said. “Not everything is fun. But at the end of the day, you want to have a culture where people aren’t afraid and to acknowledge that mistakes happen. And when those happen, we learn from it, but it doesn’t need to be fatal.”

Donald described her as a fierce problem-solver who “makes lemonade out of these lemons” and recalled a time when a ship had to emergency dry dock for repairs, canceling cruises and causing a revenue hit. When the ship was nearly ready to go, Duffy got the ship back in the water at full capacity in one week even though cruises usually take months to sell out.

“She’s very results-oriented. When faced with obstacles and challenges, she absolutely just says, ‘OK, this has happened. What are you going to do to be successful anyway?’ ” he said. “She’s challenging and demanding. People tell her, ‘we can’t do this’ all the time. Those working with her can feel the pressure of her expectations but in the end, she elevates them.”