Angie Licea Didn’t Grow Up Around Luxury Travel. She Built a Career Leading It.

As president of Global Travel Collection, Angie Licea leads a luxury travel business with more than 1,500 advisors, $2.4 billion in annual sales, and a portfolio built on the legacies of Protravel International, Tzell Travel Group, and ALTOUR Leisure. She has also led the work of bringing those brands together under one unified GTC identity.

She brings nearly four decades of travel industry experience to the role, with leadership stops spanning reservations, operations, supplier relations, and global account management. Licea began her career with US Airways, later held leadership roles at American Express and Rosenbluth International, and joined Travel Leaders Group in 2012 before rising to president of Global Travel Collection under Internova Travel Group.

But for all the scale of the business she leads today, Angie’s story starts far from luxury. She grew up on a farm in Montana, took out a $5,000 loan to train for the travel industry, and began her career making $6.90 an hour in a US Airways reservations center. In our conversation, she reflected on the upbringing that shaped her, the leaders who helped her rise, why careers are rarely linear, and what women need to understand about value, ambition, and growth.

Take me back to the beginning. What did growing up on a farm in Montana teach you about work, responsibility, and resilience?

An important distinction, it was a farm, not a ranch. People always say, Oh, you grew up on a ranch. No. Ranches are for rich people. Farms are for poor people. Your children are your farm hands.

We were up at five o’clock in the morning feeding livestock before school. Then after school, you came home, changed your clothes and did chores. Everything else came after the farm.

That taught me responsibility, but it also taught me to figure out a solution. When you’re a farmer and you don’t have money and your equipment breaks down, you still have to cut hay, bale hay, feed the animals. My dad was like the MacGyver of farming. He was the king of baler twine and paper clips, fixing equipment so we could get done what had to get done.

That’s how I am today. There’s nothing we can’t figure out. There’s always a way around a barrier. There’s always a solution.

You started out at the very bottom, making $6 an hour selling airline tickets after taking out a $5,000 loan for training. What do you remember most vividly about that chapter, and what did it teach you about betting on yourself?

I was making $5 an hour as a nurse’s assistant at a nursing home, which was the hardest job I’ve ever had, physically and emotionally, while doing a home study travel course through a company called Northwest Schools. Once I passed the home study portion, I went to Portland, Oregon, for a month of training in customer service, airline codes, and the GDS. On graduation day, US Airways was there interviewing, and I got offered a job.

So off I went to Reno, Nevada, to work in the reservations center for US Airways. I had never even been on an airplane before. My first flight ever was to Portland for the training! I was 19 years old, living in a studio apartment, making $6.90 an hour.

College was not really an option for me. It wasn’t even a consideration for someone from my background, so with travel I saw a chance to carve my own path in a business career. That $5,000 was the best investment I’ve made in myself.

Angie in 2012 when she joined Travelleaders/Internova

You’ve built a reputation as someone who can turn businesses around. When you step into a business that needs change, what do you look at first, and what defines your style as a turnaround leader?

A lot of people come into change management and start making decisions before they really know anything. What I do is really listen and assess what we can solve quickly, what we can bring together, and then work toward the more complicated, sensitive, emotional changes.

You have to keep people at the forefront, because change does not come easily.

With Global Travel Collection, some Advisors are still acclimating to the changes…others say we should have done it four years ago. You’re never going to have consensus. So if you’re a leader who requires consensus, and you’re undertaking something like this, you’re going to lose.

You have to take everybody’s feedback in, make a judgment call on what’s best for the majority, and then work on bringing the rest along. One of the hardest things for me has been learning that I can’t make everybody happy, and I have to figure out how to be okay with that.

Was there a setback or professional disappointment that ended up shaping you in an important way?

Absolutely. I’ve had setbacks. I’ve chosen to step back in some cases. I’ve taken steps to the side. There were roles that didn’t feel ultra-perfect for me.

But every single time, those deviations ended up moving me faster toward the future than if I had stayed on the exact course I thought I was supposed to be on.

People think about career growth as one straight line, straight ahead and straight up. The world doesn’t work that way. Work doesn’t work that way.

At one point, I was a director and stepped back into a global general manager role. You could also look at leaving American Express, where I was a vice president, to go to a midsize agency. Those moves helped me move faster toward the future than if I had stayed put.

It should never be about the title. It should be about the contribution that comes with the title. When it’s just about the title or the money, it never works out.

What do women often misunderstand about what it really takes to reach senior leadership?

Especially for women, I think we often undervalue the skills and attributes we bring to the table. One of the first exercises I do when I mentor someone is ask them to write down all of the skills and attributes they have that are marketable in a different environment. What could they take across the line? What makes them who they are? What makes people want to work with them?

You have to understand what you bring to the table. You have to be confident in yourself in order for others to build confidence in you and about you.

I also think growth requires being prepared to hear what you need to hear. You have to be willing to ask what you still need to work on, hear the answer, and do something with it.

And I think one of the biggest mistakes men and women make is wanting the promotion for the money or the title. That’s not going to be fulfilling. It has to be about what you’re doing, what fulfills you personally and professionally, and the value you bring.

GTC leadership in the back row: Mark Munley, Simon Brooks, angie Licea, Kyle Levin, Michelle Capaccio and in the front row: Josh stevens, Ragan Stone, Kathy Christianson, Vanessa McGovern

And once you get there, what qualities matter most, but often get overlooked?

I think a lot of people underestimate the amount of pressure and responsibility that comes with senior leadership. You have the livelihood of your company, your customers and your people on your shoulders.

From a leadership standpoint, it’s the ability to carry that pressure without letting it paralyze you. It’s the wherewithal to be self-motivated, because the pats on the back are fewer, the accolades are fewer, and what you do wrong is more heightened.

You also have to be okay with not knowing everything and surround yourself with people who do know the answers. And I think one of the most important things is authenticity. I can go in front of the board, but I can also have a conversation with an advisor who’s frustrated by a booking. If you can be a real person with everybody, you’re probably going to be pretty successful.

You’ve said you love mentoring. What do you think a mentor gives people that a boss often can’t?

For me, it’s about paying forward what people did for me.

People took time with me. They told me where my strengths were and what I needed to work on. So if I can help other people get that same guidance, then I’m doing something good for them and for the people they’ll lead in the future.

But there are rules of engagement. As a mentor, you have to be prepared to gift your time and give honest, thoughtful feedback. As a mentee, you have to be prepared to hear what you need to work on, and then you have to be prepared to work your ass off.

If someone isn’t prepared to work toward something, I’m not the right mentor for them.

Who took a chance on you early in your career?

There are so many people. Joseph Uphold at Rosenbluth International took a chance on me when I was a brand-new account manager. He moved me into account management, and then from account manager to general manager. At the time, I was about seven months pregnant and he still backed me for the promotion. That meant a lot to me.

Sandra Jarvis, one of my supervisors on the West Coast during my American Express years, always told me, be humble and keep your feet on the ground. Always be yourself. Always stay grounded.

And I would be remiss not to mention Marni Hughes, my leader at Rosenbluth International, who was a fantastic example of a strong, fair and intelligent business leader. I learned so much from her.

Of course, J.D. O’Hara, CEO of Internova Travel Group, also took a huge chance on me by promoting me to president in the middle of the pandemic.

When I look back across my career, there is no way I could be where I am without all the people who helped me along the way.

You shared with me that writing a weekly email to GTC’s 2,200 members has shaped your leadership in meaningful and even surprising ways. Tell me about that.

At first, I was hesitant. Vanessa McGovern, GTC’s marketing lead, and I would have these really interesting conversations about leadership, and she kept saying, you should write some of this up and share it. And I thought, who’s going to care? What do I really have to offer?

With her encouragement, I decided to go for it. Everything that comes out in my Authentically Angie newsletter is 100 percent me, though I do run it by the marketing team. It reflects how I think, what I believe, and how I lead. Doing it puts me in a pretty vulnerable spot, but it has actually helped build my confidence, which is kind of a weird thing to say because people probably assume I’m a very confident person. I may look like I am, but I’m not. I question myself all the time, and I’m very, very hard on myself.

What’s been most interesting is that people respond. Even when they disagree, they cared enough to engage, and that has opened communication in really meaningful ways.

It’s also been therapeutic. It gets what’s sitting up here out of my head. Once it’s out there, I can stop thinking about it and move on to the next thing.

A few weeks ago, I wrote one called Why I’ve Chosen to Be Authentically Angie, and that really sums up where I am now. I’ve decided to lead as myself. I’m a little goofy. I’m a little silly. I don’t take myself too seriously. I’ve tried taking a harder approach, and that’s not me. People see through it. It doesn’t wear well on me. So I’ve stopped trying to be anything else.

What advice would you give to a woman who is doing excellent work but keeps getting passed over for the bigger role?

Look at why you’re getting passed over. More than likely, you either don’t understand your value, you’re not articulating it, or you’re not asking the questions. What do I need to do to get there?

But sometimes, if you’ve asked the question, done the right things, and it’s still not happening, you have to realize it may not happen in that environment. Sometimes it’s the environment, not you. And if that’s the case, it might be time to move on. That’s okay.

At Hyatt’s Verité event in Morocco in December 2025, where Angie and I first met. We’re next to each other in the back row.

Before we wrap, what are some of the luxury travel trends you think hoteliers should be paying closer attention to?

Luxury travelers are still willing to spend, but they want value.

People ask all the time, what is luxury? It’s relative. But the more important question is value. They want value for their money. So hoteliers need to think about how they’re creating environments and experiences that people will still be talking about a year later.

Another really interesting shift is what I’d call grocery store tourism. People want to experience the culture through the supermarket, the local market, the everyday environment of a city. They want to feel immersed.

And the booking window continues to shift. Where people used to plan much farther in advance, we’re seeing shorter lead times across leisure, corporate, and entertainment. That means hotels, advisors and travel companies all have to be prepared to move faster.

Thank you, Angie. I loved learning about your impressive career and really appreciate your candor and advice!