CEO of Celebrity Cruises on leadership: ‘Don’t limit what you want to be’

Kaufman Rossin | Kaufman Rossin featured in South Florida Business Journal | April 20, 2016

Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, CEO of Celebrity Cruises, received top honors from both the South Florida Business Journal and the Commonwealth Institute (TCI) of South Florida this week.

She was ranked the No. 1 leader on the Institute’s list of 50 top women-led businesses Wednesday at a ceremony at Jungle Island in Miami, and was also honored among SFBJ’s Influential Business Women Class of 2016, who will be honored at a separate ceremony on May 20 at the Hyatt Regency Pier 66 in Fort Lauderdale.

But Lutoff-Perlo didn’t always know she wanted to lead a company.

“At first, I only wanted to be the head of sales, and I didn’t get that job,” she told the Business Journal. “If I could tell my younger self something, I would say, ‘don’t limit what you want to be.’”

TCI chose Celebrity Cruises to top its list after the nonprofit sent surveys to more than 4,000 women-led businesses inquiring about the company’s successes. After Kaufman Rossin collected and analyzed the data, Celebrity Cruises was chosen as the best.

“I’m thrilled, it’s quite an honor,” Lutoff-Perlo said. “It’s actually quite humbling.”

Before Lutoff-Perlo was appointed the first woman president of Celebrity Cruises in December 2014, she was the executive vice president of operations for Royal Caribbean International, which owns Celebrity. Prior to that role, she was Celebrity Cruises’ senior vice president of hotel operations and was also Royal Caribbean International’s associate vice president of product marketing. Lutoff-Perlo started off her career at Royal Caribbean International as a sales manager and describes the sales floor as more gender-balanced than the rest of the cruise industry.

“The cruise industry is still very male-dominated because it’s so heavily focused on operations,” she said. “With the ships we have out at sea, most of those jobs have always been held by men, but I really do see a big change in our industry.”

Lutoff-Perlo oversaw the appointment of Kate McCue, the first woman U.S. sea captain, who took the helm of the Celebrity Summit last year.

Lutoff-Perlo was first drawn to leadership at a young age when her younger sister was born.

“I felt like it was my responsibility to take care of her and lead her,” she said. “I always wanted to be a great leader, I wanted to be someone who could help people achieve everything they wanted to and then some.”

Her advice to women who want to be leaders in their industry: Go for it.

“But that’s easier said than done,” she said. “It’s hard. You have to excel every day. You have to get the results required of you and then some. You have to be better than the rest, but you can’t get discouraged. You have to dream big.”