kathleen harris
Office Manager
Kathleen hails from Massachusetts in the US where she began her career as a retail travel consultant. After three years, she took eight months off to travel to and around Australia.
She returned to the States for another two-year stint in retail travel before permanently settling in Melbourne in 1996. Her first job in Australia was again in a retail travel agency in Fitzroy where she began to learn about the Australian/Asian market. Again this was predominantly leisure/corporate leisure with some corporate medical industry travel as well.
Kathleen continued to work in the retail travel sector for the next four years until deciding to move into the more corporate side of the industry. She moved to a more boutique agency, MSC Travel, where she worked under the management of our very own Terence Harris.
As senior consultant, Kathleen gained a much greater knowledge of corporate travel and also high-end corporate leisure travel, before she once again decided it was time to move onto bigger and better things.
This came as a senior consultant at Rosenbluth Travel (now American Express Corporate). Here she enjoyed the management of many diversified small to midsize accounts and cemented her desire to remain in the corporate consulting role.
Unfortunately, Rosenbluth was bought out by AMEX Corporate and re-branded under that name with the Amex values, as well. As these were very different to the more personalised standard of Rosenbluth, it was not long before Kathleen moved on again.
Showgroup offered a senior consulting role with a slight twist - arranging travel for the entertainment industry. There Kathleen was introduced to a different level of travel yet again for the film, television and music industries. She describes it as an exciting role, dealing with these sectors as well as a number of large corporates and the occasional touring group.
Finally, the opportunity came to once again work with Terence at Corporate Blue. Here we'll let Kathleen take up the story:
"I have been travelling with the team at Corporate Blue for 8 years. In that time we have never had any problems at all. Their service is outstanding and when we have needed them most we have called in the middle of the night and had our arrangements in Europe changed in 5 minutes over a New Years Eve period to avoid a natural disaster. Their prices are competitive and we would not consider working with anyone else."
James Plamantouras
MD - Ontrack International
"I want to personally thank for sorting my travel from Brisbane to Melbourne as result of the Qantas dispute. As you know I had no idea about the grounding until you rang, you not only alerted me to the problem but you also provided me with a solution and a booking which allowed me to continue my trip without disruption. Well done for the very professional way you handled this matter. This is another reason I will continue to your services."
Jim Plummer
Managing Director - Ontrack Pty Ltd