Washington, District of Columbia, United States
I am an experienced executive with a demonstrated history of building and leading high-performing teams across operations, product development and marketing functions in the hospitality and transportation sector. Throughout the course of my career, I have architected and managed transformative business roadmaps that strengthened the customer experience, optimized asset utilization, and unlocked tens of millions of dollars in operating income. My competencies include: Vision Definition • Corporate Strategy • Business Transformation • Corporate Investments • Commercial Performance • P&L Management • Operations Management • Program Management • Fleet Operations and Maintenance • Maintenance Strategy • Strategic Sourcing • Capital Planning • EHS • Customer Experience Management • Service Innovation • Product Innovation • Leadership Development • English, Italian and German fluency.
Leads Amtrak’s nationwide operations for Stations, Onboard Services and F&B, overseeing a 4,000‑member team delivering a hospitality‑focused strategy, centered on operational excellence, employee engagement, and consistent service delivery.
Responsible for the commercial strategy and performance of the Northeast Corridor (NEC) and the Long Distance service lines, carrying over 18 million passengers per year. In this role I have orchestrated the activities of the commercial team aimed at driving demand growth for rail, focusing on value proposition, product offering, go-to-market strategy, and enhancements to the customer experience.
Responsible for understanding our customers, and owning the vision to improve, develop and implement products and services to exceed customer expectations. Wide-ranging role with accountability in areas including customer analytics, the design and implementation of customer experience features (including food and beverage design), train and station image standards; guest lounge design and standards; staff uniforms, customer/staff policies and procedures and food and beverage operations. The position requires significant collaboration with functional executives responsible for Marketing, Service Lines, Customer Service, Mechanical, Transportation and Human Resources, in order to execute developmental initiatives. Additionally, the role includes the corporate facilitator of the Product Development and Customer Experience Strategic Steering Committee.
Carnival Cruise Line is Carnival Corp.’s biggest brand with 27 ships, operating 1,500 voyages with over 4 million guests annually . In 2019, I was appointed to this senior executive role architecting and delivering P&L performance and guest experience. Focus on fleet asset management, maintenance, and operation; capital planning and investments; supply chain optimization; environmental, health, and safety (EHS); energy conservation initiatives; and talent management. As such, I led a global organization of 20 directors, managers and staff, as well as our Fleet Directors and project teams on a dotted-line basis. Notable achievements: ►Transformed Carnival’s Technical Operations into a critical enterprise partner strengthening capital allocation and maintenance. ►Architecting a major global asset management projected to greatly reduce maintenance and sourcing cost. Leading the global task force in developing and deploying a unified IT platform, which I navigated through the testing phase. ►Generating millions of dollars in recurring savings by in-sourcing routine equipment maintenance, which also accelerated repairs, and improved guest satisfaction. ►Delivering Carnival’s first centralized shoreside technical inventory facility, reducing repair delays and working capital. ►Realigning spending on major capital projects toward a structured competitive bidding process that rapidly achieved cost savings via vendor diversification, criteria-based selection SOPs, and process transparency.
I was responsible for strengthening the customer experience as the executive owner of the end-to-end guest journey and growing operating income managing the individual unit P&L. This entailed heading a global organization of four Guest Operations Leaders and 26 onboard Hotel Operations organizations, identifying process improvement opportunities, delivering against CCL’s guest priorities, implementing revenue and cost opportunities and defining investments in capital improvement and maintenance. Notable achievements: ►Partnering across our corporate stakeholders and departments on solutions ideation, strategic roadmapping, and organization leadership and talent development. ►Delivering a substantial increase to our Net Promoter Score (NPS), 3 years before our goal date. This was achieved by creating the guest experience framework, managing our Guest Operations Leaders to drive improvements, and elevating both guest touchpoints and operational performance management. ►Upgrading the fleet’s Hotel physical plant, improving “Ship Condition” survey scores by building a dedicated Maintenance team proactively prioritizing and executing visible repairs, and directly impacting customer perceptions. ►Sharpening Hotel Operations service delivery via an enterprise deployment of Covey “4 Disciplines of Execution.” ►Positively impacting the guest experience by strengthening our team of Hotel Directors. ►Coaching, mentoring, and developing multiple team members into roles of increased responsibility.
In this dual role managing both guest strategy and operations across the full Carnival fleet, I headed a complex organization in Guest Services, Guest Logistics, and a team of 6 Hotel Directors directly responsible for business performance for a dedicated group of 6 ships. Notable achievements: ►Utilizing analytics, guest surveys, and KPIs to prioritize programs, drive revenue and cost improvements, and measure change. ►Redesigning the fleet embarkation process, saving over $1M in annual fuel cost by shortening the onboarding cycle time from 40 to 10 minutes, and by automating non-value add processing activities. This directly improved Guest Experience scores by 10%. ►Creating revenue streams via the deployment of premium-priced “Faster To The Fun” priority onboard ticketing. ►Deploying a Business Intelligence dashboard that provided fleetwide executive reporting on guest complaints, resulting in the creation of a joint Hotel-Technical task force to resolve issues with guest direct impact. This improved Net Promoter Scores and drove savings on guest refunds. ►Sharpening the alignment between Guest Services compensation, performance, and retention by restructuring total rewards, and leading a new program to attract and retain top guest-facing talent.