To celebrate International Women’s Day, this episode’s special guest on TRI-POD, The Moodie Davitt Report’s video podcast series in association with The SEVA Group, is Isabel Zarza, Chief Operating Officer North & Central Europe and Russia at Dufry Group.
Isabel is one of the most widely respected individuals in the global travel retail community, a youthful veteran of our industry. She entered the sector with Spanish travel retailer Aldeasa some 26 years ago in February 1997 and has spent most of the intervening years in a variety of roles with the subsequent incarnations of Aldeasa – World Duty Free Group and Dufry.
In this edition we find out more about that journey but as always on TRI-POD this is about discovering the person behind the executive, from her early years to life highlights along the way.
Isabel speaks about her happy early years growing up in Salamanca in northwest Spain and the seminal influence her city and her family had on shaping her life.
Discover a perhaps fateful link with a certain Cristóbal Colón (Christopher Columbus) that might just explain the fact that Isabel has spent much of her professional life travelling.
Hear how, save for her father’s persuasion, she might have become a journalist (perhaps running The Moodie Davitt Zarza Report today) or an architect. We learn how her mother’s persistence in insisting Isabel learn to play music would pay off in unexpected ways (and with a different instrument) later in life.
Discover also how her first foray into travel retail nearly saw Isabel bound for Colombia, and her recollection of Autogrill buying Aldeasa (long since subsumed into Dufry) – a corporate drama that would ultimately play out in a very different way many years later.
Island-bound with creature comforts
As ever with TRI-POD, it’s not just about talking shop. Once again we fly Isabel on our (very) low cost carrier TRI-POD Airlines to our resident desert island (with offshore duty free status).
There she reveals her choice of music to while away the hours. We won’t give the game away here but for sure Isabel will be gazing intently into the night sky while one of her albums is playing and there will be memorable moonlight cast not only over our island but over Vermont when the other is on.
Her first choice of reading traces its subject matter to one of Spain’s and the world’s greatest novels while the second, written 74 years ago, predicts with startling accuracy the state of the modern world. As our island has duty free status we allow Isabel two items to bring with her. Not surprisingly, one has a distinctly Spanish flavour.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the episode is Isabel’s choice of three guests for a special dinner on the island. What a wonderful celebration of International Women’s Day that would be. ✈
Note: Would you like to appear with Roger and Martin on TRI-POD? Drop Martin Moodie a line at Martin@MoodieDavittReport.com and we will be in touch.
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