Since 2017, Mario Cordero has been chief executive of the Port of Long Beach.

During his tenure at the port – which shares a massive complex with the Port of Los Angeles – it has on multiple occasions reached new milestones in terms of cargo handled in any particular window. And especially in recent years, there have been a number of projects that have broken ground – such as the Pier B on-dock rail expansion and any number of EV truck charging terminals – to improve efficiency and lower emissions.

Cordero recently sat down with the Business Journal to discuss his trajectory at the port and his outlook for the future. His answers have been edited for space and clarity.

Tell me about how you found your way to the Port of Long Beach and climbed the ladder to be chief executive here.

In 2003, I was appointed by the then-Long Beach Mayor Beverly O’Neill to this harbor commission. In my service as a harbor commissioner, I continue to work full time as a practicing attorney and teaching part time in Long Beach City College political science. In my eighth year of serving as a commissioner, I was reappointed by Bob Foster, who was the mayor beginning in 2006. I was in the course of my second term, and I get a call from the White House as to whether I’d be interested in being considered to be appointed to the Federal Maritime Commission. That was unexpected; I wasn’t lobbying for that position. In essence, it all commenced with the appointment to the harbor commission, and I became entrenched with this subject matter, which I thought was not only appealing, but of great interest.

 

Had you grown up in Long Beach?

I was born in South Central; in the fifth grade, we moved to Gardena. I ended up at Long Beach State. As a freshman, I met a student who was born and raised in Long Beach. We dated for four years, got married. After 50 years, we’re still married. That’s how I ended up in Long Beach.

 

As a young person growing up, what was your relationship with the ports? Did you have one?

Growing up, frankly, I was not aware of the port industry. Being in Gardena, in the South Bay, we would go to Ports O’ Call. My dad was a laborer, my mother a housewife, so whenever we had visitors from Mexico, we’d go to somewhere where it was free or affordable, and Ports O’ Call was very affordable. We did see the port from afar, but never did I realize I’d someday be in this industry.

 

I imagine the political science and legal background helps a lot with your goals as chief executive here. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Well, the legal background definitely helps me. When I came onto the commission, the mayor wanted someone to have more environmental sensitivity. Going back to 2003, there was a tremendous push by the environmentalists in the community on the issue of emissions congestion – here we are in 2024 and we’re still on that topic, although (there has been) a tremendous success in reducing emissions – so that helped me in terms of making an analysis of what we could do or cannot do within the legal parameters.

For the second part of your question, on political science – I would ask my students the first day of every class session, ‘Why are you taking political science?’ It was part of the curriculum, so you have to, but the reason I posed that question is because, for the most part, when you mention science, it doesn’t really appeal to the general student body. The title of the class should be ‘democracy,’ because that’s what we’re teaching. Everything is political – Little League, PTA and, of course, governance. I would tell the students that the more you learn about political science and politics, it will help you in whatever career you choose, because it’s a skill set of collaboration, networking, and understanding that in a democracy, people have many opinions. The success of our democracy has been the ability to have those diverse opinions, and it was important to realize that for democracy to be successful, we needed to have a strong middle class, and I think the U.S. has been a paramount example of that success.

 

Trans-Pacific trade is obviously a hugely political issue. Tell me about your work making visits to peers in other countries across the Pacific, what those talks are like, and how that advances the relationships between them and the Port of Long Beach.

History will tell you that international trade has always served to advance relationships throughout the world. You could go back centuries and look in terms of the trade relationships. In the 20th century, obviously we move forward with globalized trade, globalization.

In any business, it’s all about relationships. Given that Long Beach has been a center for international trade for decades, it’s important to keep these relationships – whether in Asia, Europe, Latin America – to not only promote the port lobbies, but promote the international trade campaign that’s so important to California. Why we’re the fifth largest economy in the world is not solely because of Silicon Valley; it’s international trade in the San Pedro Bay complex, the largest container trade gateway United States.

 

I was speaking with someone in shipping once, and they said, L.A. is not a not an entertainment hub, but it’s a trade hub.

I think what really elevated that consciousness was Covid-19. I’ll be the first to say that was a tragic era that we went through in terms of the largest health pandemic in the last century and the people who suffered and were affected by that. Aside from that tragedy, one thing did surface: the importance of the supply chain.

The White House was all hands on deck with regard to supply chain disruption. Where did the White House send an envoy to? The San Pedro Bay complex. From that came the consciousness, both at the state and the federal level, we need to invest in our ports. This is something that, when I took this job in 2017, I was campaigning for. Whether it was Sacramento or in Washington during the time I was chair of the Association of American Port Authorities, I thought that the ports in the U.S. were not sufficiently invested in by government.

Going back to that era, when there was the huge logjam, it was a real aberration in what usually happened here. Was there an innovation made to address that unique situation at the time that has continued to this day?

That’s a great question. During that period, it elevated the discussion for the innovative condition that was happening from years prior. When I was chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission in 2015, the commission issued a report on congestion. This is way before Covid, right? But history tells you that there will be events, whether labor negotiations, weather-related conditions, unforeseen events that will cause a disruption in the supply chain, which results in congestion in the gateway. In my view, that report that was issued by the FMC back in 2015 was very interesting, because we focus on what needs to be done in the supply chain and at ports to further the fluidity of cargo moving. Now comes Covid-19, with 109 ships up and down the coast, and some of the issues that we discussed or questions presented in our congestion study back in 2015 came the bear, which is digital transformation, operational transformation.

On the latter, I emphasized to the White House that at some point we need to have 24/7 operations, or at least the framework. I’ll be the first to admit we’re not going to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week anytime soon, but query whether or not there’s the next unforeseen event that comes. Maybe as a supply chain, we need to pivot to that to avoid what occurred in 2020-2021. Simply put, this is the largest gateway in the country. Does it make sense that these cranes don’t move on Saturdays and Sundays? How would the public feel if you were to say to the airports, you work from 8-5 and airports are not open on weekends? Could you imagine the disruption to commercial and cargo operations, in the airlines? With that example to make the point, this is a $200 billion operation annually. Add Los Angeles to the mix, you’re approximating a $500 billion operation. And the good news is right now, both ports are experiencing a surge of cargo in large part because of the labor discussions in the East and Gulf, to some extent the Red Sea, and, of course, the drought conditions in Panama that impact the Panama Canal.

 

You’re moving numbers comparable to the surge that was created by the backlog, and there is no backlog.

That’s the great point that we all need to kind of step back and recognize: the investments that the government has made, the outside the box transformation in terms of getting into the whole field of digitalization, data sharing. We have two of our terminals this year that moved forward with what we call 24/7 pilot projects, essentially operating early morning hours, so that truckers would come here at 5 a.m., pick up the cargo and head out to the Inland Empire. It’s a beginning of the framework of a 24/7 vision.

 

On the note of innovation, in the in the realm of decarbonization efforts, there’s been a lot of lot of movement in the past year with terminal operators bringing in more battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell trucks. There are charging depots coming up all the time. How does this period of innovation rank for you?

It’s a great milestone of what we’ve been able to do as an industry, and specifically at the Port of Long Beach in setting the bar with regard to decarbonization, climate change, emission reduction. I was appointed to the harbor commission back in 2003…and within a year and a half came the Green Port Policy. Almost 20 years later, there’s three numbers that I want to put out there: 92, 71, 98. Our latest report shows that we get reduced diesel soot by 92%; we have reduced NOx by 71%; and we have reduced SOx by 98%. Name me another gateway in the world that has accomplished that. We’re in a very good era.

Right now, the Port of Long Beach has is approximating 23% of terminal equipment is zero-emission. That might not be a percentile that may please some of our environmental justice friends, but it’s the highest percentile of any port in the country, and like I said, we are committed to zero. How do we further our environmental stewardship? We announced that a year and a half ago: Pier W.

 

Good set up for my next question. Pier W is a really interesting project. What were your thoughts on that when it first came across your desk?

It’s a long-term project, needless to say, but I think there’s incremental projects being made in California. When I came here, my predecessor put in place a microgrid demonstration project, which we’ve completed. Right now, we have one at the joint command and control center. It’s a steppingstone to what I think the future may bring in terms of microgrid technology. What is the Port of Long Beach going to do on the quest of 100% renewable energy? We’ve led in solar years ago, but solar is not going to get us to 100% renewable energy. It’s wind that’s going to be part of that portfolio. I challenged staff to say, what are we going to do in wind? We don’t have enough of the wind constant current here to maximize the effectiveness of wind turbines offshore, but California certainly does in Central and Northern California. What evolved from this was the vision of having a 400-acre terminal where we stage and integrate these massive turbines, taller than the Eiffel Tower, which later will be able to generate 20 megawatts of energy from each turbine. When staff presented this to me, I said this has been at that point the best the best meeting I’ve had with them.

 

What’s typical day for Mario Cordero?

There’s so much on the agenda, not only the commercial operations, the community component of this, the environmental, the mega infrastructure projects. Over the next 10 years, the commission has authorized over $2.6 billion in infrastructure improvement. All of these come at you every day. The scenario for me that I’m very blessed with is that I have a great staff. Whether it’s engineering, public relations, strategic advocacy, environmental planning, the finance component, we have a very good team. On any given day, the calendar is quite busy, like for any CEO leading any organization. I’ve learned that when you walk in, you don’t know what will happen that day to deviate from something that you wanted to do.

 

What are you aiming to leave your successor?

I think I want to pass on what my predecessors have passed on to me. Pier B was discussed a decade ago, and it finally came into fruition with a groundbreaking this summer. What I’m aiming to do for my successor is to present him or her the same platform that was presented to me, hence Pier W. It’s a long-term commitment, but I’ve never said it was going to be a short-term accomplishment without challenges. But it will happen. The goal in California is to have 25 gigawatts of wind energy by 2045. China today has 25 gigawatts of wind energy. We’re not talking about Utopia that is not going to be achieved. This is something that will be passed on to my successor.