EXECUTIVE PROFILE / OCTOBER 2026
Richard Lapenna
VP Cloud, Infrastructure and Operations Engineering
Princess Cruises | Carnival Corporation
Technology executive leading cloud, infrastructure and operations engineering across fleet and shoreside environments. Accountable for a budget exceeding $50 million and a broad mandate spanning network services, compute and cloud operations, fleet IT, infrastructure delivery, experience operations, and security and compliance. Combines executive leadership with deep enterprise architecture experience to align technology investment, service resilience and operational performance with business priorities and the guest and crew experience.
CURRENT EXECUTIVE MANDATE
VP Cloud, Infrastructure and Operations Engineering
Princess Cruises | Carnival Corporation
Company tenure: December 2018 - Present
Provide executive direction for a multidisciplinary technology organization supporting shipboard and shoreside operations. Align investment, organizational priorities and engineering delivery with the reliability, scalability and service needs of the business.
- Manage a budget exceeding $50 million, balancing operational delivery, infrastructure investment, partner performance and cost effectiveness against business priorities.
- Lead network infrastructure and operations, including global connectivity, network architecture, automation, monitoring and satellite services supporting fleet and shoreside environments.
- Oversee compute, cloud and infrastructure operations across shore and fleet data centers, storage, productivity platforms, database services, observability and performance monitoring.
- Direct fleet IT operations and shipboard engineering alongside infrastructure delivery, logistics, configuration, staging and facilities, connecting strategic plans to operational execution.
- Lead experience operations, including user experience, service and release management, DevOps, shipwide support and lower environments, to strengthen service delivery across the technology lifecycle.
- Provide leadership across security and compliance, operational resilience and service governance; align technical teams and service partners around business continuity, risk management and dependable delivery.
- Develop leaders and cross-functional teams, establish operating priorities, and manage strategic technology and managed-service relationships across a complex delivery organization.
Leadership progression
Earlier role within Carnival Corporation: Senior Director, Operations and Engineering, MedallionClass program. Led operational improvement across service recovery, responsiveness, enterprise monitoring, performance engineering, network operations and DevOps, with cloud cost optimization and executive operational reporting.
CAREER HISTORY
A foundation in architecture and transformation
LMS Consulting
Executive Consultant, IT Operations and Engineering
July 2018 - December 2018
- Led enterprise monitoring and application performance integration for the Ocean/Trident program across cloud, container and data platforms, including Docker, Couchbase and Kafka.
- Developed platform improvements that delivered more than 84% improvement in mean time to recovery; integrated enterprise alerting with ServiceNow and established operational KPIs, SLAs and OLAs.
- Defined ship-based infrastructure and virtualization roadmaps and advanced CI/CD automation, operational reporting and vendor delivery.
First Horizon National / First Tennessee Bank
Lead Enterprise / Solutions Architect, Rapid Innovations Team
January 2014 - July 2018
- Led architecture and technology direction for rapid innovation supporting retail and commercial banking, including cloud, integration, mobile experiences and application modernization.
- Advanced DevOps, CI/CD and operational excellence through performance monitoring, workflow automation, architecture standards and business-centered service metrics; chaired the Architectural Review Board.
RTX Technology Partners
Senior Advisor, Technology Architect
September 2013 - January 2014
- Advised on enterprise architecture and strategic client engagements; developed the Telus application release automation business case, integration strategy, performance measures and delivery roadmap.
Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
Principal Technology Architect, Next Generation Experience
September 2011 - September 2013
- Architected infrastructure, data replication, high availability and virtualization strategies for the Next Generation Experience program, working across business and technology stakeholders.
- Developed release automation, disaster recovery, performance engineering and VMware virtualization approaches; managed technology partner relationships and mentored program teams.
Earlier leadership and architecture roles
- Concertia Technologies | Enterprise Transformation Architect / Lead Enterprise Architect | 2011
- Maplesoft Consulting Group | Senior Management Advisor / Enterprise Architect | 2009 - 2011
- IT/Net Consulting Group | Senior Advisor / Enterprise Architect | 2008 - 2009
- Brainhunter Consulting | Enterprise / Solutions Architect | 2004 - 2008
- Avalon Works Corporation | CTO / Solutions Architect / Management Consultant | 2001 - 2004
- Canada Post | Chief Technology Architect, Business Transformation | 1998 - 2001
Earlier technology experience includes Informix Canada, NCR Canada, Saudi Aramco through IBM/SBM, Revenue Canada, American Express, and Canadian federal government organizations.
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