Head of TMO

Collinson is the global, privately-owned company dedicated to helping the world to travel with ease and confidence. The group offers a unique blend of industry and sector specialists who together provide market-leading airport experiences, loyalty and customer engagement, and insurance solutions for over 400 million consumers.

Collinson is the operator of Priority Pass, the world’s original and leading airport experiences programme. Travellers can access a network of 1,500+ lounges and travel experiences, including dining, retail, sleep and spa, in over 650 airports in 148 countries, helping to elevate the journey into something special. We work with the world’s leading payment networks, over 1,400 banks, 90 airlines and 20 hotel groups worldwide.

We have been bringing innovation to the market since inception – from launching the first independent global VIP lounge access Programme, Priority Pass to being the first to sell direct travel insurance in the UK through Columbus Direct and creating the first loyalty agency of its kind in the travel sector with ICLP. Today we still invest heavily in innovation to ensure that we continue to deliver superior customer experiences.

Key clients include Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, LATAM, Flying Blue, Accor, EasyJet, HSBC, Chase, HDFC.

Our mission is focused on doing good beyond profit, which for us means we seek out opportunities for our people to share in our success and that we give back to the communities and people within which we work.

Never short of ambition, the success of our business is delivered through the diverse and talented team of over 1,800 global colleagues.

Purpose of the role:

At Collinson International Ltd (CIL), the largest operating company within the Collinson Group, we have a powerful vision: To be a strategic partner to the leading payment networks, issuers and travel companies. Driving customer engagement and incremental value through the world's most valued travel ecosystem.

Whilst we have had a lot of success over the past 10 years, and have grown exponentially, we need to make changes to the way we work if we’re going to achieve this vision. With that in mind, we are embarking on our biggest ever period of transformation - investing time and money to connect consumers, our clients and our partners to each other, and to the elevated experiences they want and expect from us.

To help us navigate through this next step in our journey, we are establishing a new Transformation team which will contain a Transformation Management Office (TMO).

The Transformation Management Office (TMO) plays a critical role in ensuring transparency, structure, and governance across all Collinson’s transformation initiatives.

We are seeking a Head of TMO who will be the gatekeeper of the Collinson transformation methodology. Working across the CIL portfolio (made up of projects, programmes and products) they will:

1.Ensure that investment decisions are strategically aligned with Collinson’s long-term goals.
2.Maintain and evolve best practice methodologies, tools, and templates to support effective programme delivery.
3.Establish and lead governance forums to ensure robust oversight and decision-making.
4.Champion the communication, training, and adoption of standardised ways of working across the organisation.
5.Deliver accurate, timely portfolio health reports for senior leadership.
6.Proactively identify and manage strategic risks, issues, and interdependencies to deliver successful outcomes.

Main responsibilities:

1.Strategic alignment – ensure new initiatives are aligned to the company’s vision and will help deliver its strategic ambition

2.Resourcing – work with the sponsors of the different initiatives to understand resource requirements (covering Programme Management, Project Management and Change Management) and match this demand to supply (prioritising competing demand where needed). In the event of there being insufficient in-house resources, work with external third parties and procurement to secure additional resources on a short-medium term basis whilst shaping future recruitment decisions

3.Planning and dependencies – maintain a centralised view of the transformation roadmap across the organisation along with the key internal / external dependencies that inform sequencing and / or timing

4.Risk and issue management – review the risks and issues experienced by the different initiatives to identify and escalate common themes that require an enterprise-wide approach to resolution. Manage and track these items to completion (owning mitigations as appropriate)

5.Governance – facilitate relevant governance forums and the distribution and closure of relevant actions and decisions.

6.Tools and templates – maintain the suite of tools and templates that can be deployed by Programme Managers, Project Managers, Change Leads and Change Managers in the delivery of the different initiatives, updating and refining as needed

7.Training and community – work with the Training and Development team to maintain career paths for Programme Managers and Project Managers throughout the organisation. Recommend external courses where appropriate and prepare and deliver internal training events. Run and / or oversee relevant communities of practice

8.Drive continuous improvement – utilise KPIs to assess the health of the overall transformation portfolio, making data-driven recommendations on how this can be improved. Continuously look for where the TMO service can be improved and drive change forward

9.Stakeholder management – Establish strong working relationships with different stakeholder groups (including Programme Managers, Project Managers, Change Leads, Change Managers, initiative sponsors and the Collinson International Ltd leadership team and Board)

10.Team leadership – oversee the work of the TMO Portfolio Reporting Analyst.

Knowledge, skills & experience:

• University degree plus 8-10 years relevant experience as a Head of TMO / Transformation Director / Portfolio Director / enterprise PMO (ePMO) Director, either in house or as a Management Consultant.
• Previous experience of managing / working with hybrid portfolios (where the initiatives are a mixture of waterfall and agile).
• External certifications in Portfolio Management desirable but not essential (e.g. Management of Portfolios (MoP) or the Portfolio Management Professional Certification (PfMP))
• Agile Product Delivery
• Change Management
• Strategic thinking and planning
• Communication and stakeholder management/ influencing 
• Cross-functional working
• Leadership and team management
• Training & development
• Problem solving & analysis
• Ability to deal with ambiguity
• Commitment to continuous learning

Collinson is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes differences in all their forms including: colour, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, family status, age, individuals with disabilities and people from all backgrounds, cultures and experiences as we strongly believe this contributes to our on-going success.

We are focused on continually evolving our purpose driven, high performing culture, providing an environment where our people have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and do interesting and meaningful work. Our company values are: Act smarter, Do the right thing, One team and Be insight led. These help guide everything we do internally in terms of how we think, act and interact, right through to how we deliver value to our customers and clients.

In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example - she/her/hers, he/him/his, they/them/theirs, etc).

If you need any extra support throughout the interview process, then please email us at ukrecruitment@collinsongroup.com