Associate Director of Social Impact Journeys
Elevate Destinations is looking for an experienced, full-time Associate Director of Social Impact Journeys.
We are a dynamic, socially responsible travel company striving to bring more meaning, perspective, and positive impact into the lives of our travelers while respecting local destinations and communities.
We are looking for an experienced Associate Director, reporting to the Director, who can lead our growing Social Impact Journey program. They will oversee a portion of the Social Impact Journeys managed by the team, in addition to developing our high-level, curriculum-based trips. We seek a motivated self-starter who will bring leadership, new ideas, and introspection to our tightly-knit Group Travel team. This position requires thought leadership, curriculum development, creative problem-solving, excellent judgment, superb organization, attention to detail, close collaboration, and eloquent communication skills.
Applicants must have experience in all categories below to be considered for this position:
- Experience in the travel industry
- Event and travel management
- Content or curriculum development in the field of experiential learning
- Strong understanding of sustainability and international development
- Previous experience supervising a team
ESSENTIAL JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:
Oversight and Quality Control of 40% of Accounts Group Travel Handles in a Given Year
In partnership with the Director of Group Travel, this role will oversee 40% of the accounts the Group Travel department manages in a year.
Definition of oversight:
When a staff member oversees an account, they are NOT directly producing the deliverables, registering travelers, or participating in all account meetings. Their colleagues are producing these results, and the Associate Director is responsible for overall account management.
- Review and provide feedback on all materials before they are sent to a client for accuracy, grammar, completion, troubleshooting, and formatting.
- Troubleshoot problems, anticipate challenges, and help colleagues solve them.
- Provide a layer of quality assurance that junior staff members learn and benefit from.
- Note: The level of oversight on each account will vary depending on numerous factors.
Essential Job Requirements for oversight include:
- Ability to handle multiple priorities simultaneously without compromising on quality.
- Ability to jump from one account to another without missing a beat.
- Understanding the minutiae of an account while empowering your colleagues to problem-solve in a supportive manner.
- Willingness to cover a staff member’s role when someone is offline for vacation or work travel, which happens frequently. This entails leaning in and managing the details of an account temporarily.
- Willingness and desire to learn from your own challenges, your peers, and feedback.
- Provide a collegial and supportive attitude to all team members 100% of the time.
- Deep self-awareness of what your limitations are and the bandwidth of your colleagues across the organization’s hierarchy.
- Help identify and support everyone’s development on the team, including identifying training and providing frequent updates to the Director of the department on how staff are performing.
- Support the hiring, onboarding, and training of new staff.
Financial Oversight of Accounts You Manage or Oversee
- Clear financial accounting on every trip you manage or oversee, making sure margins/profits are met and budgeting and reconciliation is accurate.
- Incoming Payments: Stay attuned to incoming payments from clients and travelers.
- Outgoing Payments: Manage all payments to vendors.
- Support staff in receiving delinquent payments.
- Oversee the budget and reconciliation.
Account Management of the Accounts You Are Managing
- Plan and manage international trips that are aligned with our client’s specific goals with zero margin of error.
- Establish timelines for each trip, and manage the process of the execution of each deliverable in collaboration with clients, suppliers, and Elevate team members.
- Manage itinerary planning, vetting, and execution.
- Manage logistical components of trip execution, including, but not limited to, coordinating site visits; selection of venues; meals or catering; audio and visual rentals; travel arrangements; hotel room blocks; and all other vendor relations for each trip.
- Create and oversee travel budgets and reconciliation.
- Ensure compliance with company regulations and internal processes.
- Establish emergency protocols for each trip.
- Maintain and update electronic records and databases.
- Work with the Group Travel team to determine areas of product improvement and positive social impact.
- Collect feedback after each trip, and integrate lessons learned. Identify touchpoints for Business Development team to follow up on for future accounts.
- Provide suggestions and recommendations to management for improving efficiency and effectiveness of travel and operation-related processes.
Comprehensive Client/Traveler Support and Customer Service
- Provide superb, personalized, and attentive customer service to all travelers you interact with (150+ travelers a year).
- Write 50 or more emails a day that are grammatically correct, accurate, eloquent, detailed, and personable.
- Collect all traveler details and payments.
- Manage traveler issues or concerns with accurate information, empathy, and efficiency.
In-Person and Remote Trip Management
- In-Person Trip Management: Manage two-three in-person, international trips annually. Essential job functions include:
- Ability to pick up on nonverbal social cues to manage in-person situations with professionalism.
- Remote Trip Management: Manage a trip in the field remotely, which includes:
- Checking in with the ground team and client on how the trip is going and troubleshooting any issues that arise.
- Both:
- Manage all ground logistics from A to Z, showing resourcefulness and poise.
- Ability to simultaneously advance a trip into the next phase while maintaining the quality of a trip from beginning to end.
- Ability to identify the most pressing objectives and prioritize them on a rolling basis.
Content Creation
- When needed, develop itineraries in the developing world on topical areas of expertise through independent research, Elevate’s network, and personal familiarity with the topic or country.
- Understand how to design a curriculum through the framework of an itinerary.
- Possess a deep understanding of experiential learning and techniques to support transformation while traveling.
- Develop original content for reading materials to enhance travelers’ experience and enrichment while traveling.
- Source materials and resources that complement travelers learning.
- Be a promoter, contributor, and cheerleader for sustainable travel.
ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENT FOR THIS POSITION:
We try to keep our hours within 9-5, Monday through Friday. However, the trips we run do not limit themselves to these hours. It is a requirement that the Associate Director is available for all emergencies and essential needs that occur on a trip — day or night, weekday or weekend.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE:
- Bachelor’s degree
- Seven to eight years of relevant work experience in event and/or travel management
- Prior experience managing small remote teams of about one – two people
- Project management skills, including project planning, scheduling, and tracking
- Content creation and curation and curriculum design.
- Experience being a group facilitator and program leader
- Logistical prowess and attention to detail
- Experience leading trips and travel/work experience in a developing country
- Ability and willingness to travel internationally two to three times a year
- Financial acumen and budget management experience
- Experience working in a fast-paced environment with competing priorities
- Superb critical thinking, writing and editing skills
- Must be a team player
- Excellent customer service skills
- Capacity to be flexible and adapt to change
- Desire and confidence to work with a tight-knit hard working team that believes there is always room for improvement
- Familiarity and experience with technology platforms including Microsoft Office, Google Suite, WordPress, Pages, and CRM systems
COMPENSATION:
90-day probationary period
Salary: $70,000
LOCATION:
Remote. Must be located within three hours of the Eastern Time Zone and have work authorization to live and work in the USA. No exceptions.
HOW TO APPLY:
Qualified applicants should send their resume and cover letter to careers@elevatedestinations.com with the position they are applying to in the subject heading. Kindly note, we are hiring for more than one position, so please make sure you include the position that you are applying for.
We are an equal opportunity employer and encourage people of every race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law, to apply.
ABOUT ELEVATE DESTINATIONS:
Elevate Destinations is a leader in eco-luxury travel, creating new ways for travelers to make a difference worldwide. The company was founded and operates as a social enterprise: philanthropy and positive social and environmental impact are key to their mission. Elevate Destinations has pioneered the field of donor travel and is able to provide responsible travel to any region of the globe. They encourage people to travel sustainably and design each trip conscientiously, facilitating travelers to fully experience, understand, and protect destinations and the people who live there. www.elevatedestinations.com
