Insights From the C-Suite: Eliza Pesuit, CEO, Global Glimpse

As part of a new, members-only series, Women Leading Travel & Hospitality is asking industry executives about their professional journeys, mentorship, how they stay up-to-date on the latest industry technology and trends, how they take care of themselves, and so much more. This week, insight comes from Eliza Pesuit, founding CEO at Global Glimpse, a nonprofit organization with a mission to make transformative travel possible for high school students from all socioeconomic backgrounds.

Women Leading Travel & Hospitality: Can you share a specific instance where you successfully navigated a major change or challenge, highlighting the key lessons learned and how they shaped your leadership approach?
Eliza Pesuit: In September 2018, I finalized a global partnership with United Airlines, the first in the industry to focus on making travel accessible to young people from low income and underrepresented backgrounds across the United States. After a decade of building Global Glimpse, I felt like we had finally made it and our dreams were within reach. 

That moment of glory was short-lived as the United Airlines partnership illuminated a lack of alignment on our board of directors around the pace of growth and organizational sustainability. This reached a fiery breaking point in late 2019, and nearly half of the board resigned. Even though I knew with tremendous certainty that those who resigned were driving a vision that was both unrealistic and dangerous for the organization, our employees and the communities we served, I wasn’t in a position to navigate a full board transition alone. For a full year I carried the weight of the turmoil on the board while leading the organization’s day-to-day operations. I’m deeply grateful to my mentor, former chief community affairs officer at United Airlines, for guiding our board through this period and showing me what true partnership looks like. 

Coming out of the board transition, our board was four women and we made a commitment to only bring individuals into the organization that approached the work with humility, personal passion, and a commitment to bring resources into the organization, both financial and strategic. Working with this group of women to redefine our vision and our values taught me two invaluable lessons:

• There’s no space for ego in leadership. Shared values set the tone for impact.
• Consistent alignment on vision and expectations is critical to both the success and the integrity of the work. 

The lessons I learned during this period and the changes that we made to our board structure and culture at Global Glimpse have been fundamental to our success over the past five years and our ability to not just survive, but thrive coming out of the pandemic.

WLT&H: How have mentorship and sponsorship played a role in your professional development, and how do you actively engage in cultivating talent within your organization?
EP: In the early years of building Global Glimpse I sought guidance from other social impact leaders, but I quickly realized that my vision was unique in both the travel and the nonprofit industries. The advice that resonated most profoundly came from the private sector. As I’ve grown as a leader I’ve sought out mentors and advisors whose skills, networks and leadership reflect my growth areas as a leader and what’s required for the next stage of impact for Global Glimpse. 

I’ve been blessed over the course of my career to find two incredible mentors that both arrived in my life at the exact moment when I needed their guidance most. These two leaders share a number of core traits: they’re both women, they both held C-suite positions for global Fortune 500 companies, they’re both mothers who have juggled family and work with tremendous grace, and they’re both deeply committed to our mission at Global Glimpse. These two mentors have personally invested in my leadership development by going above and beyond a professional mentor relationship. At first I didn’t feel I deserved this kind of mentorship because I had never had anything like it before; as a social entrepreneur I’d always figured everything out myself and no one had ever told me that I was worthy of investment. 

These two women have shown me what it means to truly invest in a mentor relationship and they’ve made me feel valued in a way I never thought was possible. Their belief and investment in me has allowed me to elevate my leadership.

As a leader I’m equal parts vision, aspiration and hustle. When I believe something is possible I’m going to find a way to get it done. Global Glimpse is a nonprofit organization with both earned and philanthropic revenue. In order to ensure impact and sustainability we have a culture that’s both mission-driven and business savvy. We work to support team members to build their business acumen, develop a growth mindset, elevate their skills and capabilities, and expand their understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion by providing transparent and immediate feedback, intentional evaluation, and ongoing internal and external training. 

WLT&H: How do you maintain a healthy work-life harmony, and what strategies do you employ to prioritize your well-being amidst high-level responsibilities? How do you ensure your team does the same?
EP: I’ve repeated two mantras to myself throughout my career:

1. Everything is earned, nothing is given.
2. To whom much is given, much is expected.

I don’t believe it’s possible to build something extraordinary from nothing and also prioritize yourself — at least not in the early years. I don’t think there’s something inherently wrong with that. I think there are times when we have to give everything to bring a dream to life. In 2018, I hit a pinnacle in my career. I closed a multimillion-dollar partnership with United Airlines, and Global Glimpse served over 1,000 students for the first time. I had done it. I was living the social impact dream. Looking back, it’s almost comical how naive I was as a human, let alone a leader. 

Over the past five years, I’ve lived through one traumatic event after another. The Global Glimpse board went through a period of extreme values misalignment, and I learned how truly unprepared I was to lead at the next level. The pandemic shut our programming down completely, and I had to let 75 percent of the team go in order to survive. I suffered a severe postpartum injury that left me bedridden with chronic pain for months. I lost my father, a childhood friend, and my brother-in-law all within a year.

This last chapter has brought a different kind of struggle that I couldn’t muscle through. A struggle beyond the scope of daily routines and coping tools. Through this time, I’ve had to not only face my failures and weaknesses, but share them with everyone in my world. And in that vulnerability, I’ve found strength, gratitude, a sense of heart-centered well-being that feels so much deeper and more profound. When I think about well-being now, I think about riding the waves instead of standing tall in the storm. I think about trust, authenticity, vulnerability, sharing what it means to be human.

Everything and everyone evolves. Leading through that evolution is the true test. I move slower now. I used to run almost every day to keep my mind calm. Now I walk with intention, creating space for my mind to slow down. I’ve chosen to live in an urban area because I learned through the pandemic that I need to be around different kinds of people. I need unplanned interaction in my daily life, especially working from home. I get outside every morning and in nature at least once a week. I make time to connect with powerful women who light up my soul. I practice gratitude daily, and as silly as it sounds, I remind myself to breathe deeply. Finally and perhaps most importantly, I ask for the things I need to be my best self and do my best work. And when the universe bends too far, and I feel I’m going to break, I don’t hold on anymore; I trust the process and let go. I know now that I can’t hold it all together, and that’s OK.

I don’t resonate with the way work-life balance or self-care is marketed. Rather, I like to think about creating synergy between my work and my life. Authenticity has made me successful. Each part of my life brings me great pride and joy, and it’s the sum of those parts and their ability to coexist joyfully that makes me the best version of myself. Sometimes I have to lean in more in one area or another, and I try to build up the bank of goodwill in each so that there’s space for me to move and breathe.

I work to role model trust, responsiveness, accountability and humility. I do my best work when my team is doing their best work, and our collective and individual health and happiness are inseparable from this equation. At Global Glimpse, we have a value, “own your sh*t,” which encompasses so much more than work. Take care of yourself, your family, your community, your colleagues so that you’re best positioned to handle your business. Well-being looks different for each person. I lead a global team with staff across five countries representing a broad range of backgrounds, perspectives, experiences and needs. I think it’s absolutely essential to have strong and sensitive policies in place to support people, but even more powerful is building a culture where people are given permission and flexibility to build the work-life relationship that works for them. That is what I try to model. 

WLT&H: How do you stay informed about industry trends and emerging technologies, and what role does continuous learning play in your ongoing personal and professional development?
EP: My team will say that I’m a LinkedIn maniac because I’m constantly generating new opportunities on LinkedIn. This is no accident. I’ve spent the past 15 years cultivating a powerful network of leaders across the travel, education and nonprofit sectors. I follow a combination of leaders across industries that give me a unique and powerful perspective on both needs and opportunities before they become mainstream. 

This is a unique moment in the history of the travel industry as diversity and inclusion become a business imperative, not just a nice thing to do. The future of travel is going to be more diverse in every way and the industry needs to evolve to support employees, travelers and partners with diverse backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives. 

Over the past five years I’ve seeded groundbreaking partnerships with leading brands in the travel industry, including United Airlines, Away, Snap Inc., Expedia Group, and we’re in the process of building a new partnership with Marriott International. With each of these companies, I saw a need for social impact partnership that aligned the brand with the bottom line and provided meaningful avenues for employee engagement. 

We’re doing something that has never been done before at Global Glimpse, and that kind of innovation requires continuous learning. The high school travel space is small to begin with and the equity section of this space is even smaller. Therefore, I look to peer organizations in the youth development, college study abroad, and private sector youth travel space to understand the trends in our immediate market. I’m a big believer in the power of mentorship and I actively seek out strategic advisors and board members who are positioned to guide my thinking and bring new perspectives to the table. I’m always watching and waiting for the next opportunity. When I see it, I get in early, build strong relationships, listen carefully, ask the right questions, and build collaboratively.