A CEO and Director, Katrina Barry has led change and innovation in the tech, tourism, hospitality, wellness and financial services industries. As the Deloitte FastTech50 Female Leader of the Year, she speaks on brand and business transformation, brilliant customer service and team cultures, the highs and lows of start-ups and doing what it takes to make any business, its customers and team members survive and thrive.
Katrina brings to each keynote her trademark style of “enter-train-ment”; her candid blend of engaging storytelling and high-energy training; speeches packed with case studies and take-aways that are designed to motivate, upskill and inspire.
Katrina is currently CEO and Managing Director of Webjet Group. Prior to that she was the CEO of Aussie hospotech start-up me&u. After successfully scaling the business in the US and UK, she orchestrated a merger with a competitor to create the global category leader with a $2bn turnover. Previously, Katrina was Managing Director of Contiki Holidays and Trafalgar Tours across Australasia for eight years where she led the brand revitalisation of Contiki. She held senior roles in digital and customer experience for BT Financial and was the Co-Founder and Head of Strategy for Virgin Active gym chain. After a failed attempt at being a lawyer, she began her career at McKinsey & Co consulting, before launching a series of startups with the Virgin Group and Sir Richard Branson. She has topped the Deloitte Tech Fast50 Female Leadership Awards and Women in Travel Power List. She currently sits on the Boards of Webjet and Petsure. As often the solitary female presence and typically the youngest member in the Boardroom, she has learnt plenty of lessons and had many laughs along the way.
Talking Points
Innovation, Customer Service Brilliance and Marketing Cut-through; What you can Learn from Irreverent Brands like Virgin , Contiki and Webjet
In this presentation Katrina shares stories and insights from 20 years working for iconic, innovative and irreverent brands.
Innovation, Customer Service Brilliance and Marketing Cut-through; What you can Learn from Irreverent Brands like Virgin , Contiki and Webjet
The 10 things I learnt from working for Sir Richard Branson
Across the seven years Katrina Barry worked for the Virgin Group, she did a lot more than building businesses for him including having organise to have one of Richard Branson's yachts cleaned and arranging, and even being in, headline grabbing press stunts. Katrina was a co-founder of the start-ups Virgin Money and Virgin Active that grew to 300 staff and looked after numerous other interests for billionaire Richard Branson in Australia. In her candid keynote, Katrina shares 10 lessons from one of the most powerful brands in the world that are relevant for every business.The 10 things I learnt from working for Sir Richard Branson
WHAT TO EXPECT: How to challenge the rules' of business; learning in the deep end; how to seize opportunities and secrets of the Virgin HR strategy.
VALUE PROPOSITION: Case studies, learn about the mindset require to build billion-dollar businesses in different sectors; Virgin Group team-building, staff retention and delegation tactics.
What gets your brand there doesn't keep you there brand evolution with insight
Lessons from Virgin, Contiki and Webjet on how to stay ahead of the game. Katrina details how iconic brands remain relevant decade after decade. She discusses her theory ‘What gets your brand there doesn’t keep you there’ and explains her strategies for keeping a brand fresh, relevant and evolving.What gets your brand there doesn't keep you there brand evolution with insight
WHAT TO EXPECT: Breakdown of how ‘challenger’ brands; how the Contiki brand has evolved through its unique content marketing approach
VALUE PROPOSITION: Insights on branding identity, philosophy and obsession with customer experiences.
Women in Leadership: starfish, gremlins and ignoring advice
Katrina is a CEO who has never lost her down-to-earth, honest approach to leadership. She is deeply passionate about female empowerment, mentoring and leadership. She’s worked and lived in NZ, the UK, South Africa, Ecuador and Australia. She’s been a lawyer, a McKinsey management consultant, a head of strategy at Virgin, run digital and marketing division in a big bank, worked in recruitment, coal mining, investment banking and private equity, started and sold a gym chain, and even worked for the United Nations Development Program. In this keynote, she follows her career trajectory from a near high school drop out to CEO and explains her unusual recipe for success.Women in Leadership: starfish, gremlins and ignoring advice
WHAT TO EXPECT: Reflection exercises on what needs to be done for championing women in leadership. Stats on, and case for closing, the gender gap as required. Stories around the Bbakes and accelerators for women in leadership. How to get a seat at the table.
VALUE PROPOSITION: Katrina’s unique recipe for personal success is outlined that involves taming gremlins and ignoring the advice!
A Good Strategy is Hard to Find: If your strategy can’t fit on a page, you are doing it wrong
Throughout Katrina’s career, she has discovered that businesses with a simple, clear and effective strategy and plan are as hard to find as a good man in Sydney. She outlines her tried and tested methods for developing and implementing business strategies developed from her experience at the world’s leading Management Consulting firm McKinsey & Co.A Good Strategy is Hard to Find: If your strategy can’t fit on a page, you are doing it wrong
WHAT TO EXPECT: A step-by-step guide to how Katrina works with her teams annually to develop 12-month strategic plans; mapping annual plans against longer-term strategic plans.
VALUE PROPOSITION: Details of processes to ensure that businesses have absolute clarity and all levels of the organsisation around strategic planning; ensuring plans remain relevant and set up for success.
You can learn everything you need to know for your career from Farming
Katrina Barry is a senior executive who has travelled all over the world for some of the biggest brand and businesses. In this keynote she will explain why, at the end of the day, she is still just a farm girl. Katrina claims that one of her greatest mentors is her father, a farmer who has worked the land for 45 years and has never earned more than $17 an hour.You can learn everything you need to know for your career from Farming
WHAT TO EXPECT: In-depth lessons and how they apply to business environments.
VALUE PROPOSITION: Fundamentals of farming and their application to growing businesses, teams and yourself. In particular HR, investment and work/life balance.
Video
Katrina Barry on Customer Experience | Saxton Speakers
In this insightful talk, Katrina Barry, a veteran business leader, shares transformative lessons on customer experience, drawn from her time at Virgin and other notable organisations. Katrina explores the power of stepping into customers' shoes to uncover critical insights that drive better decision-making and innovation. She shares unique strategies, like having senior leaders go "undercover" and try out customer processes firsthand — a practice that surfaced real, actionable improvements, from refining sales journeys to resolving operational glitches. Katrina underscores the importance of embedding customer-centric thinking at every level, helping businesses understand the "Iceberg Theory" of customer feedback to tackle hidden issues effectively.Design to the Opposite | Katrina Barry | Saxton Speakers
In this keynote, Katrina Barry shares her unique approach to innovation, "Design to the Opposite." Through this strategy, she and her team redefined traditional gym experiences by removing barriers to customer signups - like offering no contracts, creating entertaining childcare options, and obsessively refining customer experience. Katrina’s engaging storytelling reveals how these bold choices not only transformed her business but also set new standards for customer engagement and retention.The Power of Focused Leadership | Katrina Barry | Saxton Speakers
Drawing from her journey of scaling businesses and overcoming intense challenges, Katrina Barry shares insights on eliminating distractions, building resilient teams, and driving organisational success. In a world filled with competitive noise—whether it's better-funded rivals or seemingly more advanced technology—Katrina reveals her strategies for staying focused on the end goal and leading with clarity.Katrina's ability to connect with the audience is unparalleled, she managed to keep everyone engaged throughout the session with great, interactive content. We're still hearing a lot of posi ... keep reading Domain Group
Katrina Barry is a pleasure to work with and was a great addition to the line-up of keynote speakers for our 2018 Annual Conference. Katrina's content provided delegates with simple yet strategically important, practical ways to ensure that your brand can remain relevant long into the future by simply asking the why?'
We had 18 speakers at our last two events and Katrina was rated the top presenter of the day at both the events. I would highly recommend Katrina to any company who is looking for a professional, engaging speaker who can deliver a powerful message and can add the right amount of humour in her delivery. Her teachings have continued to have a dramatic ripple effect throughout the industry following the last event.
Katrina was an excellent addition to our annual business conference. Her personal business insights and the ones drawn from her years working Virgin were thought provoking and engaging. I would highly recommend her.
Katrina Barry was amazing and such a great choice as the guest speaker for the evening.
Recently we engaged Katrina Barry, as our keynote speaker for International Women’s Day 2024 to all staff. Katrina was highly engaging and charismatic and provided all of our staff inspiration in thinking through and implementing innovation. Katrina’s broad experience captured our people’s minds as she provided real life examples that have lead to some immediate implementations within our own business. We highly recommend.
Katrina’s keynote was nothing short of a masterclass. From the moment we engaged her for the talk to when she took the stage, her seasoned presence and captivating storytelling had us all hooked. She seamlessly blended laugh-out-loud moments from her time working with Richard Branson to deep insights into the global hospo-tech sector. Katrina painted a vivid picture of the future of tourism and hospitality tech, demonstrating her ability to make complex technical topics engaging for a wide audience. She didn’t just discuss trends; she made them feel real and imminent, inspiring everyone to rethink their approach to the intersection of tourism, hospitality, and technology. The Q&A session, handled with ease, showed just how much her talk resonated with the audience. Finding a speaker as impactful as Katrina for our next event is going to be a real challenge!
Katrina was an absolute pleasure to work with for our recent Millennials Marketing Conference. From our initial planning conversations all the way through to the execution of her talk, she was a total professional. The content of the talk was an excellent standard. Katrina was also rated as one of our most engaging speakers in our feedback survey post event.
Katrina spoke at our Millennial 20/20 Australia Summit, and her session titled, What gets your brand there doesn't keep you there Millennial brand evolution with insight', was a highlight. Katrina gave a presentation full of insight using engaging examples of the work done at Contiki to reach a rapidly changing market. As a speaker, Katrina was dynamic, knowledgeable, fun, and most importantly, clearly passionate about the presentation content and her work. It was obvious that Katrina knew the content well and was excited to share it with our audience. She communicated her enthusiasm so effectively that a delegate made the point to find me after the session to tell me she felt it was one of the best presentations she'd seen. Additionally, when I needed a panellist at the last minute for a session on The Future of Work, Katrina was happy to step-up and assist. With minimal time to prepare, she spoke knowledgeably on the topic, was funny, and was an excellent addition to the session. I would highly recommend Katrina as a speaker.
We had the pleasure of having Katrina Barry join us as our keynote speaker as part of our Aspire roadshow around the country which focused on women in finance. Katrina shared her journey from graduating as a farm kid to becoming a prominent CEO. Katrina’s candid recounting of the highs, lows, laughs, and lessons along her journey was both riveting and deeply motivating. Katrina offered practical methods for testing new services or approaches to ensure their success, shared effective ways to tame one's internal gremlins, and explained the importance of sometimes ignoring advice to follow your own instincts. Each piece of advice was delivered with clarity, authenticity, and humor, making the session not just educational but also enjoyable. Katrina Barry is a compelling speaker who instills confidence and inspiration, and we highly recommend to anyone looking for an incredible keynote.
