Dynamic Duos: Navii’s Liz Ward and Fabienne Wintle
In this week’s Dynamic Duos, Navii and Tourism Tribe’s CEO Liz Ward and CIO Fabienne Wintle share the unlikely story of their meeting at a baggage claim in Alice Springs, and the 14 years of friendship and professional partnership that followed.
In Dynamic Duos, Mumbrella each week asks two members of the same organisation with a professional and personal affiliation to share with readers the importance of workplace relationships in an increasingly hybridised world of work.
Liz Ward:
Fab and I first met at the airport on the way to a conference in the Northern Territory. We were both standing waiting at the baggage collection area at Alice Springs airport, watching lots of suitcases that weren’t ours go around the conveyor belt.
The worst had happened: our luggage was lost. This was made even more stressful because we were due to deliver keynotes at the conference, and both of us had suddenly lost our carefully chosen outfits.
Qantas provided us with apology toothbrushes, pyjamas, and underwear, but it wasn’t exactly an outfit you would want to wear on stage! Neither of us knew the other very well, but we quickly bonded over our misplaced outfits, which we replaced by running around a Country Target with a preparedness to compromise…and that we did.
After that, we continued to be profiled on the same conference programs as members of a rare species at the time: female tech and digital experts. We also worked together on a groundbreaking project in 2010 – before Tourism Tribe and Navii existed – that involved creating a guidebook on digital marketing for small businesses.
I’ll never forget the interrupted deadline for the guidebook brought about by the 6-week premature arrival of Fabie’s first daughter. I didn’t need to be concerned, for within 24 hours of giving birth via C-section, Fab was sitting up in bed with her laptop, editing the guidebook.
Through our combined understanding of the challenges small businesses were facing to learn about and adopt new tech and digital marketing, we started brainstorming on finding a better way to inspire, educate and support them to become more digital marketing savvy. Back then, it was a challenge to get small businesses online, let alone use the internet to market themselves effectively.
Just before we started the business, Fab sold her house in Brisbane and hit the road with her husband and two young daughters. Before travel blogging was the huge industry it is today. She got sponsorship from Griffith University, travel partners, leisure brands, and BIG4 Holiday Parks. Her whole family was able to travel all around the country in their van, with Fab delivering digital tech and marketing workshops around Australia.
In the early days of our business, people found it strange that we didn’t have an office or a landline phone number for our business. We were told repeatedly that we needed a ‘sign on the door’ to build our credibility and reputation. Fab’s time on the road had taught us that remote working was not only possible but preferable to a static office. Looking at the amazing team we have been able to build based all around Australia, all working from their preferred environment, I’m certain we made the right choice.
Fab is a brilliant business partner because she has an extraordinary capacity to visualise solutions lightning-fast, she has a fantastic work ethic, and she’s not afraid to take the unconventional route towards a goal.
We have a sixteen-year age gap, which has always been a source of strength for us. Our complementary family life-stages, experience, networks and skills meld to create a beautiful business partnership that means we find joy and progress in our business lives every day.
Fabienne Wintle:
One of my first memories of being at a conference with Liz was in 2009, tackling the chaos when a gardener accidentally cut the cable to the internet for the convention centre. We were told it wouldn’t be working for the rest of the conference.
The problem was, we were there to persuade the tourism industry to get their businesses online. After much messing about with an old-fashioned dongle, we finally managed to get online and convince a room of sceptical tourism operators to work on their digital marketing.
We first started throwing ideas around for what would eventually become Tourism Tribe and Navii when we went for a coffee during a conference where we were presenting in Wollongong in 2012. I remember being impressed that the cafe even had Wi-Fi, which it was lovingly called something like ‘get off my internet’. Back then, working remotely – even from a café – was rare.
We were keen to disrupt how digital marketing training could be delivered, which at the time was all via in-person workshops. For many cash-strapped, remote tourism businesses, travelling hundreds of kilometres for online training was simply out of the question.
That’s when we hit on the idea of creating 24/7 digital marketing training for small businesses, with ongoing support, all accessed online. Nowadays, this is the norm, but back then, it was considered quite unusual.
When we eventually joined forces as business partners, I’d been travelling around Australia with my husband and two young daughters. It was winter, we were in Adelaide, and we were freezing. We eventually decided to settle in Seventeen Seventy, Queensland after hearing about it from a friend. Liz was about to wrap up her time as CEO of the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) after 10 years, and the timing was perfect.
I love having Liz as my business partner because we always align on the most important parts of the business, whether it’s hiring people with the right attitude and mindset, or deciding where we want to take the business next. Even if we’re not always on the same page with an idea from the outset, we’re always able to see each other’s position and agree on a way forward.
Liz on Fab:
Most memorable moment with Fab: The day we launched tourismtribe.com in 2015 having turned the vision we brainstormed in a coffee shop into reality
Describe Fab in one word: Brilliant
Fab’s most annoying habit or endearing behaviour: Fab’s ability to see the solution to a problem at lightning speed is amazing and I don’t know anyone else who can think as quickly as she can.
Fab on Liz:
Most memorable moment with Liz: How we calmly negotiated and laughed off having no wardrobe and no internet at our first experience of delivering keynotes about going digital.
Describe Liz in one word: Strategic
Liz’s most annoying habit or endearing behaviour: Liz has this ability to park work and stick to her ‘exercise routine’ that I truly admire. Whilst I’ll never be able to do 1h of cycling followed by 1h of yoga, all this before 6am or after 7pm, her dedication to being able to take a breather from work has made me pace my local beach up and down every second day!
If you and a colleague would like to submit your story to Dynamic duos, please email kwelch@mumbrella.com.au.
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