Marriott CEO Receives 40,000 Emails From Employees Amid Trump Pushback
Marriott International CEO and President Anthony Capuano received over 40,000 emails from employees worldwide after he publicly backed the company's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives even after political pushback from none other than US President Donald Trump.
Speaking at the recent Great Place to Work for All Summit, Mr Capuano recalled what followed Donald Trump's DEI executive order and how it led to internal reflection at Marriott.
"The day the [DEI] executive order came out, I sat with our senior leadership team and I said: given the industry-leading position we have, we ought to make sure we're all aligned on, not only philosophically, how we think about this, which was the easy part, but what words we use, what language we use. We should talk with the board a little bit about it," Mr Capuano said.
Marriott's CEO said it straight: 'We welcome all… we create opportunities for all… that's who we are as a company.'
He went back to his hotel hoping he got it right. Then 40,000 emails from Marriott associates from around the world hit his inbox saying 'thank you.'
Plenty of… pic.twitter.com/uM9y4sOHW1
— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) April 22, 2025
His public comments came after Mr Trump, during his first week back in office, ordered the shutdown of all federal DEI offices and issued executive orders to undo several of Joe Biden's diversity-focused initiatives. These included eliminating the use of race and sex-based preferences in hiring and admissions and rolling back a Federal Aviation Administration policy that prioritized DEI hiring.
Following these moves, Amazon, Meta, McDonald's, Walmart, Ford, Toyota, and others began scaling back their internal DEI programmes.
The next day, Mr Capuano addressed the topic head-on at the ALIS Conference - one of the hotel industry's largest investment events - where DEI dominated discussions across eight media engagements, including interviews and a CEO panel.
There, Mr Capuano said he leaned on Marriott's century-long values, shaped in part by his decades of learning under Bill Marriott, the company's Chairman Emeritus.
"We've been around for almost a century, and political winds blow all different directions, particularly when you operate in almost 150 countries. I said, but there are some fundamental truths about this company that have guided us for those 98 years," he said.
He said the company has always welcomed everyone to its hotels and strived to create "opportunities for all." According to him, those values won't change. "That's who we are as a company," Mr Capuno said.
"In the next 24 hours, I got 40,000 emails from Marriott associates around the world just saying, 'thank you'," he said.
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