Michelle is an experienced Wholesale Procurement Leader with 20 years’ experience in the travel industry across Domestic, Inbound, Online and Global sales. Today she is the Global Procurement Leader for GPN with 8 businesses that report in to her and responsibility for $1.8B in TTV and $40M in back end override.
Passionate about leadership, Michelle views it as her greatest opportunity and contribution. My favourite leadership quote is “before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others”.When asked what unique skills women bring to the table, Michelle is a firm believer that emotional intelligence sets women apart.“We bring a degree of warmth and togetherness to the table and we are unbelievably organised and driven in our work ethic and adaptability. Woman are robust and determined,” she says.
Michelle’s career started with Tourism Queensland (then Sunlover Holidays) back in 2000. By 2005, after Sunlover Holidays was bought out by The AOT Group, she moved on to Queensland Rail Travel as a Project Manager working on a Reservations Implementation Project. It was her time here that really changed the way she thought about leadership. And it’s all thanks to an ex Flightie Leader.“My leader at the time was an ex Flight Centre Area Leader, Kelly Walker. I spent two years leading this project before making the move to Flight Centre in 2013 and the rest, as they say, is history!”Michelle’s passion is family first and then travel. She’s busy raising her 4 year old daughter and has a 22 year old son (her friends says it’s a double life sentence!). Together, the family travel annually to the snow to indulge in their passion of skiing and Michelle also competes in ultra-marathons.
