Travel Coordinator

Location

Westport, CT | United States

Job description

About Bridgewater

Bridgewater Associates is a premier asset management firm, focused on delivering unique insight and partnership for the most sophisticated global institutional investors.

Our investment process is driven by a tireless pursuit to understand how the world’s markets and economies work — using cutting edge technology to validate and execute on timeless and universal investment principles.

Founded in 1975, we are a community of independent thinkers who share a commitment for excellence. By fostering a culture of openness, transparency, and inclusion, we strive to unlock the most complex questions in investment strategy, management, and corporate culture.

Explore more information about Bridgewater on our website here.

Our Culture

Bridgewater’s unique success is the direct result of our unique way of being. We want an idea meritocracy in which meaningful work and meaningful relationships are pursued through radical truth and radical transparency. We require people to be extremely open, air disagreements, test each other’s logic, and view discovering mistakes and weaknesses as a good thing that leads to improvement and innovation. It is by continually striving together for the highest levels of truth and excellence that we create meaningful work and meaningful relationships. Within this culture, Diversity and Inclusion is a top priority because it is essential to finding the best talent in the world, enabling our idea meritocracy, and creating an environment where all types of people can thrive. We have a full-time team as well as affinity networks that work on these issues - If you would like to learn more, please let your Bridgewater recruiter know.

Explore more information about Bridgewater’s culture on our website here.

About the Client Service Department

The goal of Client Service is to build and grow meaningful relationships with the world’s largest, most sophisticated investors and help clients achieve their goals through high quality return streams and tailored insights. To this end, we deeply understand the global pools of capital, develop strategies to effectively develop relationships, and partner with clients on their most difficult investment and portfolio construction problems. We help our clients broaden their understanding of our investment process, strategies and performance as well as deepen their understanding of financial markets more generally.

About Your Role

The Travel Coordinator is a part of a three-person team responsible for itinerary processing, sourcing international entry requirements and arranging on-the-ground logistics related to business travel for key client-facing executives within the Client Service department at Bridgewater. The coordinator works with multiple internal client-facing teams to ensure that a high volume of travel requests are prioritized effectively and structured in a way that supports the traveler’s business needs within the parameters of the firm’s travel and expense policies.  Execution of this responsibility also requires the coordinator to collaborate with external travel providers.  The candidate must be extremely detail oriented, organized, process driven, able to juggle a high volume of varied requests and an independent thinker who can communicate effectively with travelers and team members alike. While travel management responsibilities are core to the role, this person may also spend up to 20% of their time cross-covering other operational or administrative responsibilities in service of the department's broader needs.

Interested in learning more about working at Bridgewater? Hear about the experiences of our employees here.

You will drive the following responsibilities:

• Serve as a central planning expert for the Client Service department to arrange travel itineraries for client-facing executives including air, rail, hotel, car rental and car services for both domestic and international travel.
• Effectively communicate travel needs to external travel providers, including travel agencies, private aviation partners, car service companies, passport agencies and travel security providers.
• Ensure that travel bookings achieve trip goals while spending money wisely. Resolves any travel policy exceptions on a trip-by-trip basis or effectively escalates exceptions as needed to the travel team manager.
• Inform travelers of international entry requirements in advance of trip, including passports, visas, vaccinations and COVID-related requirements. Facilitates processing of those requirements as needed.
• Effectively and professionally manage various travel processes against their respective deadlines amidst changes
• Continually examine internal processes and policies to identify improvements within the travel cycle.
• Cross coverage responsibilities could include things like travel expense processing, workplace ops, security administration, or records administration.

You will be a click for the role if you have the following attributes and skills:

• Process Management – ability to constantly evaluate existing machinery
• Organized and Reliable - sharp detail orientation with precise execution
• Prioritizing – oriented to consistently anchor towards the client team goals
• Pushing Through to Results – ability to deliver outcomes particularly with external vendors
• Holding People Accountable – partnering with travelers at all levels of the organization to ensure they make timely, accurate travel decisions
• Driven to Achieve Excellence – strong ownership mentality over each itinerary and workstream
• Dealing with Ambiguity – comfort being nimble as travel needs constantly change
• Empathy – ability to deeply understand and connect to traveler’s potential problems and goals
• Problem Perception – ability to perceive problems and resolve them by identifying and weighing tradeoffs
• Synthesizing the Situation - clear and concise verbal and written communication both internally and externally

Minimum Qualifications

• 2-5 years of experience in a travel planning, hospitality, logistics or executive support role.
• Strong ability to work independently and efficiently, prioritize multiple tasks and execute reliably.
• Ability to communicate calmly, clearly, and concisely to audiences ranging from service providers to executives.
• Strong proficiency in MS Office, particularly Outlook and Excel.
• Familiarity with Salesforce, SharePoint, Confluence, Concur, Zoom and Slack is a plus.

Physical Requirements

• For most of our roles, Bridgewater offers remote work flexibility, with most employees required to work on campus as their principal work location, a minimum of two days (and in some cases three days) per week with the option to work offsite on other days.

Wage Range

• The wage range for this role is $120,000- $150,000 inclusive of base salary and discretionary target bonus. The expected base salary for this role is between 80% - 90% of this wage range.

Why Choose Bridgewater?

It takes all types to make Bridgewater great. We seek a diverse group of innovative thinkers and push them to engage in rigorous and thoughtful inquiry. We develop people through an honest examination of their abilities and performance, enabling personal growth and professional development. We strive to provide you opportunities that will challenge you and unlock your potential.

In this role, you will grow with us by:

• Taking ownership of team operations processes and cadences
• Opportunities to grow your career across Bridgewater depending on your strengths, weaknesses, and experience

One of our core priorities at Bridgewater is to enable our employees to build a great life and career, and we believe our benefits are an important extension of that philosophy. As such, currently Bridgewater offers a competitive suite of benefits including:

• Health insurance with 100% premium covered and access to additional concierge medical services
• 401(k) plan with generous employer match
• Paid time off, including fully paid parental leave and a competitive PTO package
• Workplace flexibility and access to back up childcare
• Financial assistance for family building support, including adoption and egg freezing
• Workplace wellness, including on-site gyms, free meals and healthy snacks, and meditation rooms
• An engaged and active community that includes many company events, affinity networks, and extracurricular interest groups
• For a full list of Bridgewater benefits, click here.

Bridgewater reserves the right to change its current benefits program at any time, in a manner that is consistent with applicable federal and state regulations.

This job description is not a contract and confers no contractual rights, privileges, or benefits on any applicant or potential applicant. Bridgewater has the right to change any and all terms of this job description, including, but not limited to, job responsibilities, qualifications and benefits. Nothing in this job description constitutes an offer or guarantee of employment. Please note that we do not provide immigration sponsorship for this position.

Bridgewater Associates, LP is an Equal Opportunity Employer

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Salary