Away CMO on How the Travel Brand Is Building and Maintaining Community Love

Selena Kalvaria discusses how being 'different with purpose' has helped shape her as a leader

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While most would find changing roles and marketing strategies during a pandemic challenging, Away’s CMO Selena Kalvaria saw it as a perfect opportunity. “We brought everything in together. We redeveloped our processes, how we work together, and we just moved in lockstep. It’s been a fantastic journey. The company has had explosive growth even as a pandemic has set us back. I feel like in many ways it’s driven us forward.”  

This episode is also available on Spotify, iHeartRadio, and Apple Podcasts.

Before joining Away as their VP of Brand and now CMO, Selena graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor’s Degree in archaeology and finance and started her career on Wall Street before leaving to work in marketing for brands like Diageo and Anheuser-Busch.

But was there any hesitation from Selena in moving from an established brand to a digital native one? “The things that I was ready for were pace, risk taking, and creative risk appetite. What I wasn’t ready for was all the different facets and touch points of the customer experience that we are much more in control of. With that just came an exciting degree of meticulousness and thoughtfulness with which we had to program the entire customer journey, so I learned that quickly and it was, it was certainly fun help solidify and bring to life.” 

Tune in to learn more about Selena’s fascinating educational background, the advice she learned from her mentors, and some of the exciting things Away has planned now that the world is starting to open for travel again.