Donald J. Carty, (born July 23, 1946) is a Canadian-American businessman who serves as

chairman The chairperson, also chairman, chairwoman or chair, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the group ...

Porter Airlines Porter Airlines (stylized in all lowercase as porter) is a regional airline headquartered at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport on the Toronto Islands in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Owned by Porter Aviation Holdings, formerly known as REGCO Hol ...

. Carty also serves as a director of

VMWare VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

Hawaiian Airlines Hawaiian Airlines ( haw, Hui Mokulele o Hawaiʻi ) is the largest operator of commercial flights to and from the U.S. state of Hawaii. It is the tenth-largest commercial airline in the United States, and is based at Honolulu, Hawaii. The airl ...

and Betterez. He was previously chairman and

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...

(CEO) of

AMR Corporation AMR Corporation was an airline holding company based in Fort Worth, Texas, which was the parent company of American Airlines, American Eagle Airlines, AmericanConnection and Executive Airlines. AMR filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protect ...

, the parent company of

American Airlines American Airlines is a major US-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is the largest airline in the world when measured by fleet size, scheduled passengers carried, and revenue passeng ...

, from 1998 to 2003. He is the past Chairman of

Virgin America Virgin America Inc. was a low-cost U.S. airline that operated from 2007 until 2018, when it was acquired by Alaska Airlines. The airline primarily focused on operating low-fare service between cities on the West Coast and other major metropol ...

and E-Rewards, Inc. (now known as Dynata). Carty is also a past director of

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...

CN Rail The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN ...

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

Placer Dome Placer Dome Inc. was a large mining company specializing in gold and other precious metals, with corporate headquarters in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In August 2005, the company had interests in 16 gold mining operations in 7 countries ...

Barrick Gold Barrick Gold Corporation is a mining company that produces gold and copper with 16 operating sites in 13 countries. It is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It has mining operations in Argentina, Canada, Chile, Côte d'Ivoire, Democra ...

CHC Helicopters CHC Helicopter is a Texas-based helicopter services company. CHC Helicopter maintains it global headquarters in Irving, Texas and operates more than 250 aircraft in 30 countries around the world. CHC's major international operating units are b ...

Brinker International Brinker International, Inc. (or simply Brinker) is an American multinational hospitality industry company that owns Chili's and Maggiano's Little Italy restaurant chains. Founded in 1975 and based in Dallas, Texas, Brinker currently owns, opera ...

Talisman Energy Talisman Energy Inc. was a Canadian independent petroleum company that existed between 1993 and 2015. The company was created from the assets of BP Canada after British Petroleum divested its 57 percent stake in June 1992. It was one of Canada' ...

EMC Corporation Dell EMC (EMC Corporation until 2016) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts and Round Rock, Texas, United States. Dell EMC sells data storage, information security, virtualization, analytics, clo ...

(now known as Dell EMC), and Gluskin Sheff. In January 2007, Carty became the Vice Chairman and

chief financial officer The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and fina ...

of Dell. On June 13, 2008, Carty retired from day-to-day operations, but stayed on as a director. He is a past chairman of

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America Big Brothers Big Sisters of America is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to "create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth". Adult volunteers are matched with children from ag ...

, a former member of the Board of Trustees of both

Southern Methodist University , mottoeng = " The truth will make you free" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = SACS , academic_affiliations = , religious_affiliation = United Methodist Church , president = R. Gerald Turner , p ...

and Queen's University and of the board of directors of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Foundation and the Dallas Theater Center. He currently serves on the Executive Board of the SMU

Cox School of Business The Edwin L. Cox School of Business is an American business school, part of Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas. The SMU Cox School of Business is headquartered in four buildings on SMU's 210-acre main campus five miles north ...

Biography

Born in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, on July 23, 1946, Carty attended Queen's University and

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA ...

. He took US citizenship in the early 1980s. He worked for

Air Canada Air Canada is the flag carrier and the largest airline of Canada by the size and passengers carried. Air Canada maintains its headquarters in the borough of Saint-Laurent, Montreal, Quebec. The airline, founded in 1937, provides scheduled an ...

and the

Canadian Pacific Railway The Canadian Pacific Railway (french: Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique) , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canad ...

before joining American, although he served as CEO for

CP Air Canadian Pacific Air Lines was a Canadian airline that operated from 1942 to 1987. It operated under the name CP Air from 1968 to 1986. Headquartered at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, British Columbia, it served domestic Canadian a ...

from 1985 to 1987. At American, he served as controller, and later as executive vice president for finance and planning under CEO Robert Crandall, before becoming CEO of AMR himself in 1998. In April 2003, in the long wake of the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

and facing an industry beset by terrorism and hard economic times, Carty and his executive board were forced to strike a cost-cutting deal with American's

labor union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits (s ...

s, intended to mitigate AMR's upcoming $1 billion first-quarter loss. The deal—which was at the time the largest corporate restructuring outside of bankruptcy in American history—almost unraveled several days later, when unions learned that at the same time that American Airlines was demanding $1.6 billion in concessions from its unionized employees, the company gave $40 million in perks to its top executives, Although many other airlines had similar retention bonus arrangements, in order to facilitate a final agreement between the company and the unions, Carty voluntarily stepped down. He was replaced as CEO by

Gerard Arpey Gerard J. Arpey (born 26 July 1958) is the former chairman, president, and chief executive officer (CEO) of AMR Corporation, parent company to American Airlines. Biography Education Arpey received a Bachelor of Business Administration degr ...

, and as chairman by Edward A. Brennan. Carty was appointed as Chairman of

on February 6, 2006.Virgin America Appoints Donald J. Carty Chairman of its Board of Directors
," Virgin America press release, February 6, 2006. On February 2 of that year, Toronto-based

, in the process of starting up a regional service out of the downtown

Toronto island airport Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport is a regional airport located on the Toronto Islands in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is often referred to as Toronto Island Airport and was previously known as ''Port George VI Island Airport'' and ''Toronto ...

, announced that Carty would simultaneously serve as its chairman. Carty has served on

Board of Directors three times; 2004-2007, 2008-2011, and currently since 2016. In 1999, Board Alert named him one of the year’s Outstanding Directors. In 2002, he was made an Officer of the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the cen ...

. In September 2002, Carty was appointed by President Bush to the National Infrastructure Advisory Council where he served until the summer of 2005. He is a recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Law from Queen’s University.

Family Life

Carty was in born in Toronto, growing up in Toronto and Montreal, with 4 brothers and a sister. In 1969, he met Sharon Louise Smith in Boston while at Harvard, and they married in 1970. They had three children while living in Montreal, Michael Patrick, Catherine Rebecca, and William Robert Douglas. Don and Sharon were divorced in 1994. He was remarried in 1998 in Dallas to Eva Ana Maria Rodriguez. They have two children, Michael Malin Payne and Donald John Jr. They currently live in Dallas, Texas, and spend time in Newport Beach, California, and on a lake in Greater Madawaska, Ontario.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Carty, Donald J. 1946 births Living people American Airlines people Barrick Gold Canadian airline chief executives Dell people Harvard Business School alumni Queen's University at Kingston alumni Officers of the Order of Canada Businesspeople from Toronto Sears Holdings people Chief financial officers Hawaiian Airlines people