Fleet manager with a passion for networking

Agustin Diaz Jr. is our personality profile for this issue of Caribbean Maritime. Mr Diaz has a wealth of experience in the towage sector and has worked for major tug operators across the region, not only in his native Curaçao but also in Panama, the Dominican Republic and Colombia. Being fluent in four languages has no doubt helped Mr Diaz move effortlessly around the Caribbean. But it's his acknowledged skill in the somewhat esoteric art of managing a fleet of tugboats that really sets him apart.

Q. Where were you born, where did you go to school and what did your parents do for a living?

A. I was born in Willemstad, Curaçao, where I attended a Catholic high school. My mother worked in the airline industry. She started her career at Pan Am and ended it in 2005 after working for over 15 years with KLM as crewing officer. My father started his career as a school teacher, but he soon entered local politics where he spent 16 years altogether as a member of parliament and eight years as minister of the former Netherlands Antilles. He retired in 2010 after a 15-year job as port director at the Curaçao Ports Authority, which he founded in 1981 as the minister of economic development responsible for the port.

Q. In terms of higher education, where did you attend university or college and what did you major in?

A. Since Curaçao is part of the Dutch kingdom, it is quite common for young students to leave the island after finishing high school to attend college or university in the Netherlands. At the age of 18 I departed to Rotterdam to attend college at Hogeschool Rotterdam & Omstreken in an attempt to become a maritime officer. After the initial year, I realized that navigation was not really what I wanted to do. I changed course slightly and embarked on a journey to study international logistics engineering at the same college, which – combined with an additional NIMA business marketing study – laid the foundation for the career I have in the shipping world today.

Q. When growing up, did you have a clear idea of what career you might choose?
A. Yes. Ever since I was a small child, I felt the lure of the sea and its ships sailing in and out of our harbor, bringing cargo and connecting continents. Growing up in Curaçao made it impossible to ignore all the harbor traffic going on in the middle of downtown Willemstad. It made me wonder: how do the logistics behind it all work? At a respectable second place on my mind was the beverage industry, especially the marketing behind it. I see doing business development in the shipping industry as a fusion of both passions: shipping and commercial. Knowing the right people, making new contacts to discuss and develop business; isn’t this one of the main reasons we all love the CSA?

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