High-flying leader Andrew Stark looks forward to being confined to a cold bridge for The CEO SleepOut™
As MD of South Africa's largest travel company the Flight Centre Travel Group, Andrew Stark still makes time to get grounded to help those in need. Listen to his Group's motivation for participating in this year's The Sun International CEO SleepOut™.
High-flying Managing Director of the Flight Centre Travel Group, Andrew Stark draws parallels between this initiative and their company gets up as a strong motivator for participation: “I think it’s got so many synergies towards our own flight foundation, where it’s all around education as well, so I think it resonates with us. This being our first year (participating in The Sun International CEO SleepOut™), we see it as a great opportunity to get involved and moving forward, obviously try and get other industries involved in the program.”
Andrew walks through what's ahead for The Sun International CEO SleepOut™: "I’m looking forward to it! I think that walking a mile in someone else’s shoes is all part of what leadership does so I think this is a good starting point and what we’re also doing is that our company is doing a CEO Sympathy Sleepout TM on Friday night, in our own car park in Joburg, to try and get our own people involved, because obviously, we couldn’t put all of them on the bridge as well.”
Andrew as MD of the Flight Centre Travel Group, is leading South Africa’s largest travel company, boasting R5-billion in travel sales, with operations in New Zealand, Ireland, Singapore, the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, United Arab Emirates, China and Australia.
Andrew first joined Flight Centre South Africa as a new business development manager in 2000 and worked his way up through the organisation, locally and abroad. He has held a number of executive roles within the group, including GM Product and Marketing, GM Product (New Zealand), GM Corporate and GM Retail before being appointed MD in 2015. Andrew is a highly driven individual who thrives on incentives and goal-setting.
Andrew has called on CEO of Pentravel, Sean Hough, Morne du Preez, the CEO of Tourvest Travel Services and MD of BidTravel, Allan Lunz to Rise Up To The Challenge #4Leaders4Change