Elevate Destinations

Experts in socially responsible luxury travel. We design travel experiences that support conservation and local communities without skimping on comfort.

Join Our Team

Director of Social Impact Journeys

Elevate Destinations is looking for an experienced, full-time 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 Director, reporting to the VP of Business Development, who can lead our growing Social Impact Journey program. They will oversee the Social Impact Journeys managed by the Group Travel department. We seek a motivated self-starter who will bring leadership, new ideas, and standardization to our tightly-knit Group Travel team. This position requires thought leadership, an understanding of how to develop standard operating procedures, precise financial accruement, excellent judgment, superb attention to detail, close collaboration, and eloquent communication skills.

Applicants must have experience in all categories below to be considered for this position:

  1. Multiple years of experience in the international travel industry
  2. Previous experience managing a team of five or more people for over three years
  3. Financial acumen and budget management
  4. Experience hiring and training individuals
  5. A track record of bringing institutional knowledge into actionable SOPs for a variety of different positions
  6. Strong understanding of sustainability, international development, and philanthropy
  7. Deep understanding of relationship management with partners and suppliers
  8. Confidence in communication with high level clients and travelers

ESSENTIAL JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:

Account Air Traffic Controller/Essential Duties

  • Manage the bandwidth of all staff and allocate accounts and responsibilities in a way that is aligned with efficiency and a healthy work-life balance for all team members.
  • Understand the ins and outs of all accounts and keep team on task to meet their deliverables.
  • Oversee and manage any emergencies and hot spots on accounts, including in-country emergencies with a traveler’s health or security. Be accountable for the quality of our product from beginning to end.
  • Prioritize short-term and long-term responsibilities for yourself and the team.
  • Identify goals, priorities, and outcomes for the department on an ongoing basis and report out to the VP of Business on these needs.
  • Review and manage a team of about four-five individuals.
  • Provide guidance and mentoring support once each quarter through the performance review system.

Oversight and Quality Control of 60% of Group Travel Accounts

This role will oversee 60% of the accounts the Group Travel department manages in a year and will supervise the Associate Director, who is overseeing the remaining 40% of accounts.

Definition of oversight:

When a staff oversees an account, they are NOT directly producing the deliverables, registering travelers, or participating in all account meetings. Rather their colleagues are producing these results, and the Director is responsible for:

  • 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.
  • Capacity to understand 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.
  • Ability to 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.
  • Capacity to identify and support everyone’s development on the team. Identify training needs and provide frequent updates to the VP of Business on how staff are performing.
  • Support for the hiring, onboarding, and training of new staff.

Supervision

  • Supervise a remote team of 4 to 6 staff members.
  • Prepare and run virtual, weekly, all-staff meetings.
  • Listen for understanding, and reframe problems into opportunities for growth.
  • Have a willingness and desire to learn from your own challenges, your peers, and feedback.
  • Support team members with a collegial and supportive attitude 100% of the time
  • Help identify and support everyone’s development on the team, including identifying training, conferences, and providing frequent professional reviews.
  • Set an example of excellence and professionalism in all that you do.
  • Identify gaps in capacity or bandwidth, and create a strategy and or hiring plan to overcome those deficiencies.
  • Manage the hiring, onboarding, and training of new staff.
  • Plan and implement two Group Travel workaways/retreats for staff each year
  • Allocate familiarization trips, conferences, and vacations in a fair and equitable way.
  • Troubleshoot challenges on accounts that need senior leadership supervision.
  • Manage professional reviews and regular check-ins for all staff in the Group Travel department.
  • Inform your supervisor about all quarterly performance reviews, and debrief on growth and learning opportunities of staff. Participate in decisions on team member raises and promotions after annual reviews.
  • Step in and cover a colleague’s duties while they are on vacation or working abroad.
  • Support staff who are managing trips in the field

Financial Oversight 

  • Manage the department’s budget, and report to Director of Finance on projections and discretionary spending.
  • Make strategic spending decisions that are aligned with our financial projections, and adapt them as the year progresses.
  • Clear financial accounting on every trip we run, making sure margins/profits are met and budgeting and reconciliation is accurate department-wide.
  • Manage all payments to vendors for the department.
  • Support staff in receiving delinquent payments
  • Oversee the budget and reconciliation for all accounts.
  • Identify savings opportunities and service enhancements, and initiate improvements.

Systems Improvement

  • Identify and provide solutions for systems and processes in the department that will improve the quality of staff and traveler experiences. Translate these into SOPs that streamline the workload and onboarding process into a seamless process.
  • Make sure all templates sourced for trip materials are updated, correct, and easily accessible.
  • Identify redundancies in our systems, and streamline processes.
  • Participate in every trip debrief call to understand how the trip ran and to maintain positive relationships with all clientele.
  • Manage decisions on department resources, including computers, monitors, phones, phone plans, remote offices, etc.
  • Improve and communicate internal and external department policies, and identify what announcements need to be shared with clients.

On-call and Emergency Planning

  • For the trips 60% of trips the Director is overseeing, they are required to stay in touch with the clients remotely during their trip via WhatsApp (work phones are provided). This means they must have consistent access to cellular services when trips are running remotely and be in a position to respond to messages.
  • Refine and strengthen the Group Travel team’s emergency planning process for both internal and external needs. Make sure that standards are implemented across the department and that all staff feel confident about how to handle an emergency situation.

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
  • 10 years of relevant work experience in event and/or travel management
  • Experience managing a remote team
  • Project management skills, including project planning, scheduling, and tracking
  • Experience being a group facilitator and program leader
  • Logistical prowess and attention to detail
  • Experience leading trips in a developing country
  • Willingness to travel internationally two times a year
  • Financial acumen and budget-management skills
  • Experience working in a fast-paced environment with competing priorities
  • Superb critical thinking, writing, and editing skills
  • Strong and thoughtful communication 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

IMPORTANT: 

We believe all great supervisors have experienced what they are asking people to manage and improve upon. Therefore, there is a six-month training process for this position in which your job tasks will be outside of the scope of the essential job requirements for the Director position. The new Director will be required to support account management for two to three trips. They will be responsible for all the tasks and deliverables that they will eventually manage and oversee a team to provide. We anticipate the Director fully stepping into this role by the beginning of Q2 2024.

COMPENSATION:

90-day probationary period

Salary: $80,000

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.

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