From the moment Bettina Deynes took on the role of SVP and chief HR officer for Carnival Cruise Line, she was already feeling overwhelmed.

“It was 2019, a historic year for Carnival, and I was brought on to develop a world-class HR team,” Deynes told participants at From Day One’s recent Miami conference on “Workers and the Corporate Values Revolution.”

“Within a few weeks of arriving on the job, I had concerns that I made the wrong choice in taking the position,” Deynes said. She described feelings of self-doubt, and a sense that she would have difficulties understanding the intricacies of this highly complex business.

And then Covid hit.

“I went from feeling inadequate and thinking about things like overall strategy, goals, and tackling environmental concerns to managing this monumental moment,” she said in a fireside chat with Tim Padgett, the Americas editor for Miami NPR affiliate WLRN.

Before the pandemic, Deynes fought to ensure HR got a seat at the table where cruise-line executives made major decisions. “During Covid, HR became the table,” she said. “There was not a single conversation in which our team was not involved.”

This pandemic hit the cruise-line industry harder than any other, essentially shutting it down and triggering mass layoffs. This traumatic period was an opportunity for Deynes to learn how to do more with less. Her 90-person team shrunk to 27. A staff reduction of magnitude would be difficult to navigate even in the best of times, asserted Deynes. But it was even more challenging during the early days of the pandemic, when her team was tasked with assisting tens of thousands of team members from 200 different countries, each with their own laws and regulations regarding the pandemic.

Deynes underscored the magnitude of this task. “The employee-relations issues we had to deal with were life and death.”

“We had to help employees regain their lives,” she said. “Throughout the pandemic, we were very conscious of taking care of our employees. At the end of the day, this business is all about our people.” In the face of this uncertainty and upheaval, Deynes thrived. “This period is when I gained my confidence,” she said. 

How exactly did she do it? She credits the spirit of garra charrúa, a refrain from her native Uruguay referring to the resilience of this small, underdog nation. “Being an immigrant and being a woman, sometimes you have to work in industries where you’re underrepresented,” she said, highlighting her years leading HR for the Washington Nationals baseball team.

While Deynes’ key to success was having grit and breaking through self-doubt, she was conscious of remaining humble and honest. “It was about realizing that we will get through this, and knowing that I worked for a company that was committed to doing what was best for our employees.”

Over the course of the pandemic, Carnival ended up re-engineering almost all its HR processes, from benefits to remote-work policies to how they respond to new legislation. These efforts were ultimately a success, with Deynes retaining every member of her HR team. But getting through the pandemic would turn out to be the easy part.

“The return was twice as hard as the pause,” she said. To get operations back to cruising speed, Carnival was now competing with every other cruise line to ramp up operations and attract as many consumers as quickly as possible. From an HR perspective, Deynes and team had to deal with a deluge of logistical headaches such as visa delays and quarantine requirements.

Despite it all, Deynes maintains that Carnival emerged from the pandemic stronger than ever, noting that the company now has 27 ships, up from 24 in 2019.

Looking forward, Deynes painted a picture of Carnival as a leading employer in the cruise industry and beyond. “The most important thing is to create a culture that is inclusive,” she asserted, noting the continued importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Deynes signaled that questions of remote work, benefits, and environmental footprint will also remain top of mind in Carnival’s HR plans.

Successfully managing the pandemic has equipped Deynes to accomplish these initiatives as well. “I learned to have faith and to keep reminding myself that everything is OK, that everything will be fine, and that I have the tools to get through tough times.”

And now Deynes is in an even better position to spearhead this mission. In October 2022, the executive who was at first unsure of herself was promoted to global chief HR officer for the cruise line’s parent company, Carnival Corp., a tenfold increase in her responsibilities.

Riley Kaminer is a Miami-based journalist, researcher, and content strategist. As a freelance tech writer and researcher, he has profiled more than 400 of the world’s top entrepreneurs and investors. His work has been featured in Forbes, the Times (UK), Rest of World, LatAm Investor, Refresh Miami, Cities Today, and more.