In early December, Celebrity Cruises held a naming ceremony for its newest ship ‘Celebrity Edge’. Celebrity Edge is the company’s first new ship in six years and first new ship series in more than a decade. The ship is known for promoting women in multiple roles onboard, as well as for the way the company’s CEO, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, is working to boost women leadership in shipping industry.
Mrs. Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, the first and only woman to lead one of Royal Caribbean’s cruise line brands, as well as the first and only female CEO of a cruise line listed on the New York Stock Exchange, was appointed as a CEO in December 2014, and has been intensively engaged in the fight for gender diversity and the encouragement of women ‘as new leaders of the world’.
One of her first moves as a newly-appointed CEO was to hire the first American woman captain of a cruise ship, the ‘Celebrity Summit’, challenging leadership to raise the men/women ratio onboard. Celebrity has now a record three female captains on its ships. The third female Captain, Kate McCue, will take the helm on Celebrity Edge from 2019.
Apart from these, Nicholine Tifuh Azirh was appointed at the ship’s bridge, as the first woman from Ghana to work on the bridge of a cruise ship.
On 4 December, the Pakistani activist and youngest Nobel Prize laureate, Malala Yousafzai, named the ship in a ceremony in Florida. Yousafzai is the inspirational co-founder of Malala Fund, which advocates for a world where every girl can learn and lead by investing in local education activists, holding global leaders accountable and amplifying girls’ voices around the world.
Celebrity Cruises is owned by Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises. The ship’s homeport is Terminal 25 at Port Everglades. Celebrity Edge began her maiden voyage on 9 December.
