Nadja de Oliveira & Birta Marlen Lamm | Market Associates in Copenhagen

Starting a job at the world’s biggest travel company is both exciting and overwhelming. Here’s the experience we had, two women where one of them is Birta coming from Iceland, where the whole population is only a few times the size of Expedia Group and the other one is Nadja, raised between big and busy Copenhagen and a small, quiet village in sunny Portugal.

What we found unique was how the team welcomed us, the people at this company are so open and united, just like a family. It truly sets the tone and vibe for the one-team feeling, even across locations and offices.

Despite Expedia Group being an excellent company, both in terms of work environment and in its core business, Expedia Group acknowledges that we can still do better on every level. Therefore, one of our guiding principles is to relentlessly strive for better. This makes you rethink your day, your calendar, the email that you are writing, the meeting you are attending and even the presentation you are creating. It keeps the questions present of why do I do it this way, as well as, how can I make it better.

In the spirit of relentlessly striving for better, we decided to start a WELL (Women at Expedia Learning & Leading) chapter in Copenhagen. WELL is the organization in Expedia Group, that aims to empower women at Expedia, provide company-wide awareness of women’s leadership initiatives and provide an opportunity for career development. There are many local WELL chapters around the world and we kicked it off with a Lunch and Learn session centered around why words matter, inspired in the article written by our very own Expedia colleague Karen DeJarnette. This session centered around expressions or words that are excluding, misused or can be misinterpreted – f. ex. guys, bossy and man up. Even though it is a chapter centered around women at Expedia, we included everyone for us to grow as a team, to become better communicators together and learn from each other. We were honored that every single person in our office attended the session. Crammed up in our cozy meeting room, we came together and discussed this sensitive subject. We emerged as a better team who are more conscious of our communication with each other internally, as well as externally.

Having an environment that allows and encourages these sensitive and difficult topics somehow takes the pressure of thinking you have to be perfect from the start. We are not expected to know all the answers. Instead, we need to be humble and acknowledge our limitations and be open to ask and learn from our peers and team. Being humble is also a guiding principle at Expedia, which is a meaningful topic on its own, but for another time or another post.

If you want to join a company where you’ll be part of a family and where you know we are all working to becoming better together – then Expedia Group is the place for you.