Mr. Arnold W. Donald has been the Chief Executive Officer and President at Carnival Corporation since July 3, 2013. Donald, 59, started the job at the cruise giant after serving on Carnival’s board for 12 years. He was a longtime cruisegoer who took his first vacation at sea to play blackjack and had a professional background that veered closer to science, technology and agriculture than the business of leisure.
Neither of his parents finished high school. Father Warren, “a rural Louisiana renaissance man,” had a job in a department store and worked as a carpenter; he built the family’s home himself. Mother Hilda, an outgoing personality who was full of ambition, took the jobs she could find, including work as a maid and teacher’s aide.
They instilled a value for education and the church in their own five kids, and welcomed others as well, taking in a total of 27 foster children during Donald’s school years. His Catholic high school in New Orleans, the all-black, all-boy St. Augustine, drilled high expectations into its students three times a day: “Gentlemen, prepare yourselves. You’re going to run the world.”
High school internships, summer programs, study abroad and college degrees (in liberal arts and engineering) all led to a career at agriculture company Monsanto that lasted more than 20 years. Donald’s positions there included president of the agricultural sector and president of the consumer and nutrition sector.
As an ambassador now for Carnival Corp. and its 10 brands around the world, Donald finds himself making a new pitch.“It’s bringing the world closer, it’s giving people a broader view of humanity, it’s life’s little moments,” he said. “I really believe it. I’m not a snake oil salesman.”Each line — Holland America, Princess, Cunard and Seaborn, to name a few — prospers on its unique personality. The Cunard experience, for example, is very different than Carnival.
Donald was accepted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. But it was during the Vietnam War. During a campus visit, he realized the Army wasn’t for him. Then Easter weekend he toured Carlton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Hazel Roberts, a senior from Boston, was part of the same recruiting trip. They met, chose Carlton and were married two years later. After graduation, the couple went on to the engineering school at Washington University in St. Louis.Scholarships made all that possible.
Today, the couple finances several high school and college grants. And, because of their support, the business technology center at St. Augustine is named after Donald’s parents. It’s a philosophy that carries over to their St. Louis home. Donald had carved into the Indiana limestone fireplace mantel a Greek phrase that translates: Education is a portal to prosperity.
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