International Women’s Day: 6 Inspiring Growth Stories at GetYourGuide

Career development and personal growth is important to us. To mark International Women’s Day 2021, held annually on March 8 since 1977, six inspiring women share their career development stories. Each team member opens up about the challenges and opportunities they faced along the way. Through their experiences, you’ll learn valuable advice and insights into how you can make the next jump in your career.

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Here are the six women sharing their incredible growth journeys:

Jessica (Jes) Ney — onboarding coordinator, Talent Development team

Jessica became an onboarding coordinator at GetYourGuide, after having worked as an office assistant for a year. She tells us how her dedication to the company's initiatives and her passion for supporting and engaging employees led her to move to her new role in the Talent Development team.

Emma Brooke — Brand copy lead, Marketing team

Emma is the Brand Copy Lead at GetYourGuide and has worked as a creative and copywriter for the past decade on many brands. Emma describes how she grew to her current management role thanks to the Associate Program. Her passions include learning guitar and making the perfect gin and tonic.

Carolina Rodrigues — team lead, International Accounting team

Carolina is the team lead International Accounting at GetYourGuide. Some of the companies in her portfolio from her time before GetYourGuide include brands such as Accenture and Despegar.com, where she worked as an accountant. Her hobby? Eating. So don't be surprised if she joins a Zoom meeting with food in front of her

Sophie Byrne — senior destination manager, New Zealand & Pacific Islands

Sophie is a senior destination manager at GetYourGuide, always on the hunt for new activities in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. She tells us about her journey from joining GetYourGuide with very little sales experience and no experience working in the travel tech industry to her senior role today and gives us tips on how to grow professionally.

Mariam Soady — senior backend engineer, Paid Search team

Mariam is a senior backend engineer at GetYourGuide. After having worked as a backend engineer in performance marketing, she tells us about her challenges working in an international company and shows us how commitment can resolve almost any problem, besides helping her grow into her new senior role today.

Paula Herrera — senior UX researcher and associate manager

Paula is senior UX researcher at GetYourGuide. She has extensive experience in her field, and has previously worked as a market researcher for brands such as SoundCloud or Zalando. When living in London, she even worked directly with David Guetta on his social platform presence.

GetYourGuide: Can you give us a brief overview of your career path at GetYourGuide? When did you start and how has your career progressed since then?

Jes —  office assistance to onboarding coordinator

I joined the Office Team in February 2020 and began my growth journey with the encouragement of my team. My work gave me access to key stakeholders and different departments, giving me opportunities to connect. I worked closely with Talent Development (TD) and quickly grew interested in the amazing work they do to support and engage employees.

In October 2020, I applied for the open position of employee experience specialist. Although I didn't get this position, what I got in return was even better, a mentorship with Milica Sapic, team lead for the Talent Development team. Through this experience, I was hired as the new onboarding coordinator starting April 2021.

Emma — Brand copywriter to Brand copy lead

My journey at GetYourGuide began in September 2018, when I joined the Creative Studio as a Brand copywriter. After about a year, I became a senior team member, and in January 2020, was promoted to the role of associate copy lead.

Carolina — accountant to team lead International Accounting

I joined in May 2019 as an accountant in the Finance department.  I was promoted to senior accountant In January 2020, where my main focus was the German entity "Tours and Tickets,” until March 2020 where I was moved to the international team, first to help with compliance of 2019 and then to become fully part of the team. Shortly after, I was promoted to team lead International Accounting.

Sophie — destinations manager to senior destination manager

I started in January 2019 with minimal sales experience and no experience working in the travel tech industry. Naturally, I was nervous about entering a new, fast-paced environment, but I was lucky enough to be mentored by some amazing women from the beginning of my journey here. Since then, I feel like I have completely transformed professionally and in my personal life too.

When you have a lot on your plate, you need to focus on prioritizing, and if you are missing important points, express your concerns to your direct manager openly, raise your hand and ask for support if needed. You are not a superwoman. You cannot do it ALL alone!

Mariam Soady — backend engineer to senior backend engineer

I joined in October 2019 as a backend engineer in the Paid Search team. I participated in developing data processing pipelines for marketing metrics optimization and developing internal services that enable local data administration. Through this experience, I gained a deeper knowledge of the system and tech stack and areas of enhancement. Eventually, I received a bigger scope of responsibilities and ownership.

Paula — senior UX research to senior UX researcher and associate manager

I started in 2019 as a senior user researcher working with two product teams (Activity Details Page and the On-Trip team) and mostly helped them validate the designs we wanted to implement on our site. Since then I’ve worked with five different product teams, two different company-wide initiatives and started the collaboration with all data/insights teams in the company through various projects. Now I am a senior II researcher as well as the associate manager for my team.

GetYourGuide: What were the main challenges you faced in your growth path, and how did you overcome them?

Jes: My major challenge was patience. Once I knew I wanted to join TD,  it was incredibly difficult for me to wait. What helped was having this mentorship and connection with Milli and the team, where knowledge exchanges happen. I was able to see the bigger picture and trust the process, even though at this time (October 2020) I had no implication of when an opportunity would arise. The team saw my potential and value, and this was more important than an immediate opportunity.

Emma: The Associate Program is an awesome opportunity at GetYourGuide that gives people with limited management experience hands-on coaching to become leaders within the company. I’d always lacked confidence in my ability to manage people, and it’s something I’d found quite difficult in the past.

Having a dedicated person to guide me through the challenges in my first year really helped me to massively improve my skills in this area and turn it from something that scared me into a true passion. So much so that I took on extra leadership responsibilities during the pandemic and have just passed the Associate Program to become the Brand Copy Lead.

Carolina: Short-time work (Kurzarbeit) was really hard. Many colleagues were on zero hours, yet their responsibilities needed to be covered while working 90% of my time. The restructure was even harder because I lost colleagues but not responsibilities. I focused on results and material amounts, frequently asking myself, "is this worth it?"

The path to development is not easy. You’re going to be outside of your comfort zone and knowledge expertise. Resilience is key for those moments where you are exhausted or feel challenged, however you need to quickly bounce back from these negative components and keep the end goal in sight.

Sophie: A big challenge I’ve faced was constantly being underestimated, and sometimes disregarded, particularly by people in positions of power in the industry. Having an equal counterpart who was male, I would often be bypassed for negotiations and conversations — regardless of the fact that we were in the exact same position.

Alongside this was an ongoing feeling of imposter syndrome. I had this constant fear that I wasn’t knowledgeable enough, old enough, good enough, or smart enough. During my first year with GetYourGuide I didn’t feel super comfortable sharing my learnings or knowledge — internally or externally — because I really didn’t feel like I had much to offer.

Mariam Soady: Communication was the first challenge I faced. It was my first time working in an international environment and expressing myself only in English. After spending time listening and practicing English, it eventually became easier. I began to read non-technical books in English to improve my conversation. Data processing projects were an interesting challenge as I didn't have much experience working on data on such a big scale. Fortunately, I had a wonderful onboarding from the team and used technical resources to gain more knowledge and best practices.

Paula: My main challenges were focus and impact. Being one of the only two researchers in the organization meant that there was always a long list of projects that needed my attention, learning how to prioritize effectively was key here. I have to thank my manager at the time for helping me see that I was spread thin. I then used prioritization frameworks (Impact, actionability, uncertainty, and effort) to help me decide where to invest my efforts.

When it came to impact, I realized that I needed to make the effect of research in the product clearer. For that, I started working on making my research more actionable through strong relationships with my stakeholders. Working together with them in understanding what the decisions they needed to make were and how my research would feed into those was vital.

GetYourGuide: What are the key pieces of advice you would give fellow women to help them progress in their career at GetYourGuide or elsewhere?

Jes: Two factors played a huge role: resilience and networking.

The path to development is not easy. You’re going to be outside of your comfort zone and knowledge expertise. Resilience is key for those moments where you are exhausted or feel challenged, however you need to quickly bounce back from these negative components and keep the end goal in sight.

Internal networking played a huge role for me in my development journey. I learned quickly that our company has some extraordinary employees who have a lot of knowledge and skills they are willing to share if you create space for this.

Something I love and value about working here is how open senior team members are to having open conversations. There seems to be an unwritten rule where no one is too senior to have a coffee with you, which is incredible!

Having the influences and advice from the members of the focus groups (Diversity & Inclusion and Mental Health Advocacy Group) gave me the necessary developmental skills for my future (i.e., budget proposal writing, event planning, etc.) and a great support system. Development doesn't happen alone, and making connections provides excellent insight into your journey.  

Emma: If I had one piece of advice to women looking to progress in their careers, it’s to be your own biggest advocate (even if it feels super uncomfortable at first). Get in the habit of loudly and proudly telling people how you contributed to a project, and actively seek opportunities that push you out of your comfort zone — they’re usually the ones that will allow you to grow the most.

Carolina: Staying strong, thinking positively, and collaborating with others are the main pieces. We realized that we were all facing the same challenges and that we needed to survive. When you have a lot on your plate, you need to focus on prioritizing, and if you are missing important points, express your concerns to your direct manager openly, raise your hand and ask for support if needed. You are not a superwoman. You cannot do it ALL alone!

Sophie: If anyone underestimates you, that’s their problem. Use their doubt as an opportunity to surprise them. Speak up and celebrate your wins – it isn’t bragging if it’s based on facts – and do the same for the women around you. We all rise by lifting each other.

Mariam Soady: My advice will be to focus on the problem and be persistent. Sometimes a problem seems hard, but when you eliminate distractions and focus on solving it, it gets easier, and learnings come along the way.

Paula: Focus on the impact and how your work feeds into the problems the business needs solving. To know those, good relationships are important. Something I love and value about working here is how open senior team members are to having open conversations. There seems to be an unwritten rule where no one is too senior to have a coffee with you, which is incredible! Make use of that.

Interested in a career at GetYourGuide? Check out our Careers Page.

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