She rides a bicycle to work. She is tender-spoken, wears no makeup, and is no longer placed on any airs as head of certainly one of the most prominent tech organizations in the world. To present the important thing note to a target audience of around 200 people from 80 specific nationalities, she walks up to the degree in informal attire – a black T-shirt and trousers.
Her simplicity isn’t deceptive. It’s inspiring and heart-warming. Gillian Tans, president and CEO of the online travel platform Booking.Com, is one of the world’s highest-paid CEOs, with an internet-well worth of $ 40 million. (Her revenue in 2016 became $17 million.) When HerStory catches up with Gillian at Booking.Com’s swanky workplace in Amsterdam, she is happy to speak about not just the 23-year-old agency in which she has spent the last sixteen years, but also approximately women making a mark at the tech scene, which has long been a male-ruled one.
Gillian is an exception to this norm. After graduating from Hotel School Middleburg, The Hague, and serving as Director of Sales at Golden Tulip Hotels, she joined Booking.Com in 2002. In the last 16 years, she has worked at Booking.com in global income, operations, IT, content, and consumer care. In 2011, Gillian was appointed Booking.com’s Chief Operating Officer and promoted to chief executive officer in 2016.
The 48-year-old mother of 3 has additionally been instrumental in bringing extra women into technical roles and has led some initiatives at Booking.com.
Attracting more girls to tech
To enhance opportunities for girls in tech, Booking.Com offers 500,000 euros in scholarships to undergraduate and postgraduate women studying computer science, engineering, generation, and arithmetic. This is finished in partnership with institutions, including Cornell University, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, Oxford University, and the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands.
“This is an issue; we should all worry about the future. This is why the timetable for Booking.com is excessive; we’ve 20 percent girls in tech roles, which I assume is probably higher than that of numerous agencies. We control to increase it every year, but it takes a lot of effort,” she says.
In a recent survey, Booking.Com discovered that women nonetheless perceive their gender as harmful to pursuing a tech career, with greater than 1/2 (fifty-two percent) attributing this to the tech enterprises in large part male-ruled body of workers.
Gillian is concerned that few function models exist among women setting up their enterprises or becoming CEOs. “This may addialsod more girls to think that avenue is not feasible. That’s why I hold pram media to exhibit more such girls (in tech),” she adds.
However, Gillian agrees it is more complicated for women in board rooms to talk up. “I also always want to push myself; my voice is low, or I don’t need to interrupt.”
Leading the organization’s increase
It changed beneath Gillian’s management that Booking.Com grew from a small Dutch startup to being the worldwide leader in travel and tourism and superior to its operations in more than 224 countries and territories.
Gillian remembers with a smile that the founders wanted to build the corporation from an Excel sheet. This became a time when few motels were used generation. Gillian realized that they had to expand to more countries, have people on the ground, and help their companions succeed by going online. She says:
