Most people would think that the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company would lunch at only the finest of restaurants. Not so for Michelle Peluso. This Travelocity CEO is happiest grabbing a brown bag lunch and eating it with a few of her 5,000 employees - something she does on a regular basis. Any employee is welcome to join her, from mailroom clerks to executive team members.

"I wolf it down in like two minutes," she laughingly admits, "so I can speak and answer any questions they may have. I give them a review of our last quarter for 10 to 15 minutes with the latest and greatest goings on in the company and I then turn it over to them. I take questions from the group for 45 to 50 minutes and I always get lots of great questions. I keep each lunch to 15 people max so we can really interact," she explained. These employees are based around the globe and an additional 2,000 full-time contractors are in India, so naturally she travels a great deal to meet with everyone.

Dallas-based Peluso is on the road about half of every month. "I feel really privileged to be able to go to all of our offices. I get enormously inspired by our employees," she said. "It's important to me that I'm visible to my employees and that I'm a good communicator."

She writes a weekly e-mail that is sent to all employees featuring news about the company. "We give information about how we're doing in relation to our strategic goals," she said. "I find the more information I give them, the better information they have, the more they're pulling in the right direction."

Employees know that if they have a concern they can e-mail Peluso and will get a response within a day. "I have this 24-hour service agreement with myself. Their questions matter to me. I have a sense of urgency to get back to people. If I don't know the answer to the question they are asking, I will check with the appropriate people to get the correct answer but will still get back to them within 24 hours."

This fall will be the first time she is putting her 24-hour turnaround time guarantee on hold. "I am getting married in September and am going on a honeymoon. Bora Bora doesn't have great Internet connections anyway," she said with a chuckle.

Personally, as well as professionally, things couldn't be better for Peluso. Travelocity is growing rapidly. "This year, our goal is to book $10 billion in gross travel," she proudly reported.

Ground Zero

The road hasn't always been so easy. Site59, the last-minute travel Web site Peluso ran that was acquired by Travelocity in March of 2002, was headquartered only a few blocks away from New York City's World Trade Center. Peluso, along with 80 other Site59 employees were there on that fateful Tuesday morning when terrorists attacked the towers.

"We felt like everything disappeared off the face of the earth. It was so hard. We had an employee that was trapped in the World Trade Center subway station, and we couldn't get in touch with him until after 9 that evening," she said. "Sept. 11 has made a huge impact on me."

And on her company. Site59's business came to a screeching halt, with zero sales for the rest of that devastating month. "Last-minute, spontaneous travel was not that relevant to people right after Sept. 11," she said simply.

Not one to give up, Peluso led her team in the rebuilding process. "I asked them if we would let this defeat us. I told them we have a great team of people who can accomplish extraordinary things if we come together," she said. And come together they did. By January 2002, Site59's revenues had returned to the pre-Sept. 11 level. February sales were 50 percent higher than August; and March sales were double August's numbers.

"We pulled together as a trusting team and did an extraordinary job. It was incredibly rewarding. The experience carved its mark on me," she said. "We came back, rebuilt our business without layoffs, and then went on to surpass pre-Sept. 11 forecasts. Our employees had a sense of commitment, dedication, and urgency."

Making time to give back was also a priority for Peluso's New York office. "There is a fire department right next to our office that lost four of their five first responders that day. We started cooking them dinner and hanging out with them every Monday night. This was part of the healing process for us. It helped us get a sense of ourselves back."

Super Achiever

It would be hard to imagine Peluso ever not having a sense of herself. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, she received her master's in economics, philosophy, and politics from Pembroke College at Oxford University where she was a Thoroun Scholar. After this stellar college career, she started a nonprofit. She was the first woman double-promoted at the Boston Consulting Group, the 3,000-person global business strategy consultancy. She has served as a White House Fellow, and managed a $10 billion portfolio as senior advisor to the White House Secretary of Labor - all before she turned 30. Four years ago, Peluso's Site59 was acquired by Travelocity and she became chief operating officer and senior vice president of product strategy and distribution. At that time, Travelocity's focus was on booking airline tickets, with 70 percent of its revenue coming from standalone flights.

Peluso was part of the effort to change that to bundling tickets with hotel and car reservations. These days, the company has evolved from a Web-based travel broker to more of a travel marketer. Peluso has proven to have wisdom, knowledge, and motivation techniques beyond her years. "There have been times when I've walked into a room and I know some are feeling that not only am I a woman but I am young. But this is not something I have ever focused on. I'm very aware of my strengths and weaknesses. I have a team of people who have deeper experience in certain areas than I do that I can tap into." She never loses sight of how far women have come in the business realm. "When I was growing up, it was still virtually unheard of for a woman to be a CEO of a major company," she said.

She attributes her success to mentors. "I've always surrounded myself with people who are talented and have incredible integrity," she said. The most positive mentor in her life has been her dad, Richard Peluso, an entrepreneur who ran Wehran Engineering. "Growing up, I was taken by his amazing concern for his employees and how much they meant to him. He put his employees and customers first and that had a profound effect on me … that and his enormous amount of integrity."

The Path to Professional Growth

Peluso believes that "being a leader and creating something new is about being willing to crawl out of that really comfortable shell, and move into a new one. I know well how the new shell can sometimes feel too big, and a bit lonely - scary, even. But, it's the hard things that shape us. It's the risks and the challenges and the sheer determination to get through the obstacles," she said.

According to Peluso, you can only grow professionally if you stretch and diversify. For instance, she said, if you are really talented at marketing, look for an operations job.

A human rights activist and community supporter, Peluso sits on the board of a Long Island AIDS home, Christa House, and has participated as a Big Sister since the age of 17. A travel enthusiast, she has worked and spent time in 40 different countries, including Brazil, Vietnam, Cambodia, Senegal, and all of Europe.

To say Peluso is passionate about Travelocity is an understatement. "I never take for granted that the hard-earned dollars our customers spend with us are an investment in their own hopes and dreams. It is a calling we will never take lightly. We live in a hotly contested and competitive environment in online travel. And, to win, each of us at Travelocity has to believe that we can make a difference. Every interaction with a customer counts. Every meeting with a supplier is a chance to build an even stronger partnership," she said.

When it comes to her team, she has nothing but praise. "They are the best, and besides making me better every day, they make our company better every day. With a team like ours, my formula for inspiration is easy. I've learned and hold dear that being 'the boss' means that it's my job, at the end of the day, to put other people first and to make sure my organization is full of people who are smarter than I am, passionate about winning, and who will call a spade a spade. It is incumbent upon me to dare my team to think big; to be honest and direct with them, even during the challenging times; to get to know them on a personal level; to be their champion for career growth; and to obsess about getting obstacles out of their way."

For Peluso, "in the end, it's always, always, all about people. If you figure this out, the rest will take care of itself. My leadership team and I think and talk about our people all the time. If you are passionate about something and give it your all, it can burn like wildfire through an organization."

Not a day goes by that Peluso doesn't reflect on how fortunate she is. "Who would have thought a girl from rural New York would end up running a company she loves," she asks, "surrounded by exceptional people at every turn."

Andrea Doyle is Convene's senior writer. The Leading by Example series is sponsored by the Canadian Tourism Commission. Visit its Web site at www.CanadaMeetings.com.