Travel Women We Love: Virtuoso’s Una O’Leary

It’s easy to be intimidated by Úna O’Leary; Virtuoso’s Vice President, Global Partnerships has an impressive resume that spans an extensive career in marketing, partner relations and travel that includes commercial real estate, insurance and financial services.

She’s spent many years at major companies such as American Express and CIBC before joining Carlson Wagonlit Travel as Senior Director for Marketing & Partner Relations. In 2021, O’Leary joined Virtuoso, building a team of eight across Canada as GM for Canada before being promoted to her current role earlier this spring.

But seven minutes into our conversation, we’re sharing Toronto subway stories and the challenges of allowing our kids to manoeuvre them on their own.

It’s that kind of welcoming personality that has led O’Leary to not only be so successful in her career, but also as a solid leader and coach.

“I’ve managed a lot of people and had oversight for not-for-profit volunteer boards that required coaching, compliance, regulation recognition and overall support. I think my time at the Insurance Institute of Canada is probably where I picked up my best coaching skills,” she tells Travel Market Report Canada.

“We had brokers who were elected as board presidents and had only ever dealt directly with their clients – they did not oversee staff. Managing a board and people was new to them. I started to develop as a stronger leader from that experience – how to coach and train people, how to lead people, but also drew on my own past experiences, what I liked as a leader, and what I didn’t like as a leader.”

O’Leary saw the opportunity at Virtuoso to grow a luxury brand and build a team from scratch in Canada as a positive one and says she didn’t necessarily hire the expected people.  She was looking for people who were unique and different that fit the brand and the culture.

“Virtuoso is the largest luxury travel organization in the world, we have over 20,000 advisors and to be able to support that in market, you need feet on the street, strategically and culturally. We’re people first. We strive for the win and serve with sincerity and kindness.”

O’Leary’s love for travel started at a young age, when she would spend summers in Ireland where her parents are from.

“They would go and travel the world and drop us off with our aunt, which I loved. It was great because we got to grow up experiencing a different summer than our friends on the other side of the world,” she tells us with a laugh.

When she was a teenager, the family moved to Abu Dhabi for work that would allow them to also travel in the area. She spent two years in Austria and Salzburg and one year in Switzerland during high school while her sister was schooled in Ireland and Switzerland.

“The cool thing about it was when we left to come back to Canada, my dad had a car and of course, it’s the Middle East so it had a cooler in the back, which ran through the ventilation system. Dad’s sister needed the car, so we drove it to Dublin from Abu Dhabi, through Saudi Arabia through Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria – countries that don’t even exist anymore – Germany, Austria, France, England, and then over to Ireland.

It was the days of the Sony Walkman, so I had my bag of batteries and tapes to help me get through being in the car with my family for weeks,” she laughs.

Last year, O’Leary returned to the UAE and said it had transformed into a “Vegas on overdrive” which gave her a real perspective.

“I didn’t even know where I was, and I had visited many times when I lived there. This is why I find travelling so interesting, because it gives you such wonderful perspective on change and shift and connectedness with the world. You know just how human vision and intervention can change these incredible spots that are part of our wonderful world.”

Having a career plan is something O’Leary stresses to the people she works with and mentors, and says it’s equally important to be patient and ensure you balance your career with a personal life.

“You have to be patient with your plan, and you have to also listen to what people are telling you as leaders; in some cases, it’s to a take a step back and be reflective. I’ve always been very passionate about things that I believe in. But there’s passion and then there are ways of sharing that passion with people to bring them along with you as opposed to running way ahead.”

For women and families raising children in the industry, O’Leary says it’s “important to give yourself some grace. It’s okay to step away from things, and you’ve got to put time aside for yourself into your calendar. Don’t miss the opportunities for the firsts because they only come once.”

“The whole human connection side of things is so incredibly important in the travel industry. Because this is what we are doing. We are connecting humans with the world. We’re providing them with exceptional experiences.

We have a wonderful obligation to the people that we send on the trips to help shape their memories.”