FIRST AT LARGE VACANCY: LOUISE GARDINER, CTM

Louise served her first year as Member of the ACTA National Board for 2016-2017 but has been an active member of the ACTA Ontario Council and ACTA representative on the TICO Board of Directors since 2012. She welcomes the opportunity to continue her participation and offer her ability to strategically lead the ACTA organization through mission, vision, and strategic planning exercises with both short term and long-term objectives.

In addition to Louise’s strength in governance, she offers executive management experience in overseeing a multi-billion dollar retail sales and loyalty division including strategic planning and P&L accountability. She is a leader of the CWT Associate Franchise program with 110 locations across Canada and oversees all regulatory legislation for CWT Leisure including PCI, CASL, PIPEDA, CTA, TICO and ACTA. Adding another acronym to this “alphabet soup”, Louise is proud to have earned her ACTA Certified Travel Manager (CTM) designation.

Louise is committed in her preparation and participation in company and industry meetings and events. She has managed CWT leisure meetings from three person team meetings to large 500+ annual conferences. Louise is the current chair of the TICO Business Strategy Committee and member of the Legislative & Regulatory Modernization committee.

Fully bilingual, Louise possesses excellent communication skills with a confidence to present to large, diverse meeting attendees, while engaging them with passion, creativity to secure buy in and enthusiasm within a constantly changing environment. Being a good listener with the ability to be open to different points of view is valuable when sitting around a boardroom table of your peers. Louise brings this along with a core competency to work collaboratively with team members.

Acknowledgement of Louise’s work has also been recognized with earning the KW Better Business Bureau Integrity Award as well as being nominated as Kitchener Waterloo Woman of the Year in 2002 for her philanthropy leadership as President of the Rotary Club in Kitchener.

Advocacy, Education, Promotion and Connection are levers that ACTA Canada uses to ensure that consumers have professional and meaningful travel counselling and Louise looks forward to contributing to the success of each pillar and to the Mission and Vision and subsequent strategies as set out by the current ACTA Board of Directors.