It is with pleasure that we present to you today our next feature in our Women in Travel series, our profile of Nathalie Boyer, Executive Director of Transat Distribution Canada (TDC) written by Alexandra Roy.

Through these articles, we hope to introduce you to the Women in Travel and showcase their inspirational journey, as well as their rise to fame and what has led them to take on the most influential roles in the travel industry. We hope you enjoy it!

From chartered accountant to director of the largest group of travel agencies in Canada, Nathalie Boyer is one of those women who have been particularly successful in the industry. However, things have not always been so simple, for her as she celebrates her 20 years of career at Transat this summer. She talks to us about her career and the main obstacles she has encountered as a woman.

"I started my career as an external auditor for Consultour, a subsidiary of Transat at the time," she says. “I spent three years there. I think they liked me so they offered me a management position in France. At 26, I left my parents’ home, with my little backpack, to go to France, all alone, thinking I’d go and make friends. But unfortunately, the French people do not have the same relationships with their superiors as we do. It was a hard experience, but also a beautiful one, because I learned a lot from it.”

“I was there two years when I was recruited by Odette Thomas, a woman in the travel industry who was a great mentor to me. It was a woman who had drive. She told me: "You're going out there with rope to hang yourself. You make your mistakes and you learn from them."

The challenges of motherhood

Two years later, she returned to Canada and started working in the field of acquisitions, still for Transat. It was at this moment that she experienced one of the biggest challenges of her career - motherhood.

"It has not been easy for me as a woman because you always have a feeling of guilt that men do not have. I remember at the time, we were preparing to acquire Thomas Cook, which was a huge opportunity for Transat. I had taken four months of maternity leave to take care of my son. Today, although I have no regrets, I find myself stupid to have done that. I could have stayed at home longer, because no one had forced me to come back, but I had to make a choice. At the time, that was what needed to be done, otherwise I would have missed an opportunity. I did not want to have to tell to myself later, "Okay, it's someone else who's going to have the job after that, so I came back."

"At some point, you have choices to make, if you want to find a balance. Before, I felt guilty all the time when I went on a business trip. I remember, at the time, I was a little crazy; I was doing Montreal-Mexico City round trip. I took the plane, made my meeting, and came back, because I wanted to be away as little as possible for my family. Today, I no longer have this guilt. I will take the time to do my trips as it should, but it's exhausting," she says.

When a woman executive arrives in Mexico

Boyer has never felt diminished as a woman in the industry because she is fortunate enough to work in a company where the president (Jean- Marc Eustache) is proud to work with women and she feels constantly supported by her boss (Joseph Adamo).

However, she says she has observed some cultural differences in how women are treated in Mexico, where she had to manage the financial aspect of a small tour operator in Monterrey.

"When you get to Mexico, and you're the boss and you manage Mexicans, culturally, it's not easy," she says. “One, because you're not Mexican; two, because my Spanish, I learned it, but it's not my mother tongue; and three, the majority of men are reluctant to see women holding high-level positions in Mexico. In Greece, it's the same thing. So I would say that internationally, it was more difficult for me.”

“I remember when I went to meet the bankers in Mexico, I always took one of my employees with me. The banker would not speak to me, he would speak to the gentleman next to me. This kind of thing happened regularly. It's part of the culture and morals of some countries and I think we just have to adapt."

In Quebec, she has never experienced that, let alone at Transat. However, she has sometimes felt a certain contempt or judgment from some people in the industry.

"Even today, there are men who question my leadership. I know this because they wrote to my employees and my boss to tell them. I know there are some men who are happy to criticize my leadership. Maybe not necessarily because I'm a woman, but because my style is probably different from that of some men in the industry."

Far from those complaints being formalized, the director of TDC takes this with a grain of salt. "I find it funny, because I have a boss who believes a lot in me. I am very lucky for that because he is very attentive and is very aware of the decisions I make. He is in agreement and supports them. Even if I make a mistake, he will support me, so I have no problem at this level. I'm lucky about that, so it's better to laugh at it," she says.

A persevering and passionate woman

When asked about how she explains her success, Boyer responds without hesitation with one word: perseverance. She is also very passionate about her work. "I like what I do, I love my members, I love my employees and I believe deeply in the industry. I believe that the job of travel advisor has a future, if it is well done and if it is well positioned. We have to be happy about what we do and to be in the right place, at the right time, and that's what happens to me. As long as there is passion, I will persevere and continue," she says.

In the end, though her ambition and thirst for success may have cost her a first marriage (Nathalie is no longer with her husband at the time), the director of TDC has no regrets. She now shares her life with another man and her only son, whom she adores, and "who is worth 10", she jokes.

"I have long been a workaholic because I wanted to prove to people who I was, so it comes with hours and sacrifices. But again, we must not have regrets. I always said to my son, "You're better off having a happy mother doing what she does than a mother who's unhappy because she missed opportunities," so we all live well with that.”

"When I had my promotion as Executive Director, my son was very happy because he said, "At least, you will be only traveling to Canada now; you will no longer be gone all the time internationally". So he was very happy with that. "