And given her stellar career and how she joined last year’s class of TTG 30 Under 30 after wowing judges with her standout application, she is worth taking advice from.

Kent-native Bowbrick tells TTG she stumbled into the travel industry while studying at Reading University. As part of her business and management degree, she had to do a placement year and chose Travelport because of its focus on interns’ development and corporate social responsibility.

“The role itself was what I wanted to do as a career,” she says, adding that she kept working part-time throughout the university years. After graduation, she joined Travelport’s team full-time, going from strategic analyst in August 2020 to senior manager in January 2022.

“It’s not something I thought I would love and enjoy as much as I did, at least until I started working in it,” she explains. Now, aged 26, she’s been in the same role for more than three years but she doesn’t expect to leave the technology company anytime soon.

In her role as commercial operations senior strategy manager, Bowbrick is tasked with helping Travelport’s EMEA team with their strategy planning, market analysis and process improvements.

“The best part of my job is working and collaborating with teams from across the globe,” she says. “People are really supportive.”

When asked about the highlight of her career, Bowbrick lights up, telling TTG that shaping Travelport’s internship programme is one of the achievements she’s proudest of.

“I’ve gone from being an intern myself to now helping support the programme and interns’ development, creating new kinds of ideas to keep making the programme more exciting and valuable,” she explains.

She revolutionised the programme by adding the intern portfolio, where apprentices can record all they have done during their time at Travelport – including long and short-term goals. “At the end they have a log of everything they’ve learned and achieved throughout the year, which will help them in their next jobs,” she adds.

According to Bowbrick, ideal candidates don’t need to know everything about Travelport, they just need to be curious and proactive.

“We’re not a well-known company so we don’t expect you to know the ins and outs because as a general travel consumer you probably will not have heard of us,” she explains. “But just have a willingness to learn.”

Bowbrick also feels very proud when it comes to her work around sustainability. She initially became interested in the topic when the company arranged for her to take an online course on corporate sustainability in partnership with Oxford University. 

Throughout the six weeks, Bowbrick deepened her understanding of corporate sustainability by attending lectures, engaging with group discussions and writing weekly essays on how the learnings could be applied to Travelport.

“Obviously, I had a lot of ideas and thoughts around sustainability,” she tells TTG. “So off the back of the course, I asked to join the ESG committee to help drive our corporate sustainability strategy, whether that’s from a social or an environmental perspective.”

A risk analysis on Travelport’s ESG focus areas is one of the many initiatives that Bowbrick has spearheaded since joining the committee.

As part of her sustainability efforts, the 26-year-old is one of Travelport’s representatives at Travalyst, the sustainability coalition founded by Prince Harry to transform travel into a net-positive industry.

Launched in 2019, Travalyst features 13 of the world’s biggest travel and technology companies – including Travelport, TripAdvisor, Google and Expedia. “It’s nice to be in a situation where lots of companies are working together on a problem rather than being competitors,” she says. 

Looking ahead, Bowbrick’s future looks bright as she plans to work more on sustainability, whether at Travelport or somewhere else.

“I’d love to stay in travel but I want my role to be more focused around sustainability, and that might be with Travelport or it might not,” she concludes. 

But one thing is certain, Bowbrick will make her mark wherever she may go.