Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line, says her time as a volunteer leader with MPI not only had a tremendous impact on her career, but also led to valuable friendships many years later.
As we celebrate the MPI Foundation’s 40th anniversary in 2024, we reached out to Duffy—a former member of the MPI Foundation Global Trustees and chair of the MPI International Board of Directors who was also recently named one of “2024’s Most Influential Women in Travel” by TravelPulse—to discuss launching the Women’s Leadership Initiative and why the meeting and event industry is more relevant than ever.
Can you tell us about an important MPI Foundation initiative that was part of your tenure as a volunteer leader?
In 2001, I started the Women's Leadership Initiative, which was ultimately adopted by MPI. The idea was for this to be an industry-wide initiative given the number of women who worked in the industry and the lack of women at the top of their companies—and even on the MPI International Board of Directors, which consisted of primarily men at that time. I was fortunate to be able to get in front of the board. Dave Johnson, who was with Wyndham Hotels, and United Airlines stepped up in a big way with contributions that enabled us to hire a full-time resource at MPI to lead the Women's Leadership Initiative.
Can you tell us about a personal highlight from your involvement?
For me, MPI and the Foundation have always been the place for people in the industry to come together for education that helps people do their jobs better and share best practices and, more importantly for me, personal and professional networking opportunities. Whether it’s at the chapter level, the international level or with the Foundation, the more you give, the more you get back. That’s why even today, while I'm not in the meeting and event industry per se, I still have a lot of pride and love for MPI and what it what it gave to me, which is friends 30 years later. My MPI involvement made the biggest impact on my career in terms of being young and starting out in a career and being able to learn and grow and have so many mentors. And when I was able to grow myself, I was able to give back.
Why would you encourage today’s meeting professionals to get involved with the MPI Foundation?
The work that the Foundation does has a big impact, especially for people who may not have the ability to donate or the ability to attend all the meetings and programs that they would like to attend. The Foundation enables MPI to spread further and do more than MPI would be able to do on its own.
Why do MPI and the MPI Foundation matter today?
I hope there’s always the strong connection that’s existed between MPI and the MPI Foundation. Many people who serve, whether you start out a chapter or at the international level, ultimately find their way to supporting the MPI Foundation. The Foundation and MPI are as relevant today as they were 40 years ago. I think the industry and the work that we do as meeting and event professionals matters even more today than ever because we've always said that coming together changes the world, and today so many people are coming together a lot less in their day-to-day lives, given the way we are working more flexibly and with advancements in technology. Bringing people together is enabled by the work that people in this industry do, and that matters even more than it did 30 or 40 years ago.
