# Martin Tonner > IT Product Management | Delivering Seamless Travel Operations & Unforgettable Guests Experiences Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/martintonner With over a decade as a leader in both physical and digital experience design, I define myself as a global ambassador. I have managed complex logistics, people, and operations centered around my passion for the natural and cultural world. I have built and managed teams, products, and systems in over twenty countries across five continents. Time spent with communities and in the natural areas of Vietnam and New Zealand stands out as some of my favorites. I am currently splitting my physical presence more frequently between California, USA, and Nova Scotia, Canada. I have a proven ability to lead a team and scale operations in a fast-paced, high-growth company, with passion and humor on my side. My time in the industry across various roles has taught me the value of "best-in-class” service and the importance of efficient and passionate cross-functional teams. This experience has allowed me to improve quality standards while serving clients, employees, and local communities. Much of my work has required compassion and a sophisticated understanding of cross-cultural perspectives. Through successfully collaborating with an array of businesses, government agencies, and NGOs in a fast-paced, dynamic environment, I have fine-tuned my ability to navigate moral and legal situations through integrity and diplomacy. My artistic background combined with my business acumen brings a fresh perspective to my work. I am known for anticipating problems and employing innovation to find creative solutions to challenging situations. I leverage my real-world experience to drive digital transformation and innovation in IT product management. Navigating AI/ML challenges, I focus on ethically leveraging technology to eliminate inefficiencies and gain deeper insights into client needs and product requirements. By breaking down technology barriers and harnessing large data sets, we empower our teams to contribute where they excel and are most passionate. I focus on the optimistic future of AI/ML—where technology accomplishes what humans cannot, enabling our people-first operations to do their best work. While AI can drive efficiency and uncover insights at scale, it will never replicate the intuition, creativity, and human connection that define truly meaningful experiences & connections —those will always belong to us. ## Work Experience ### Technology Product Manager @ Backroads Jan 2024 – Present | Berkeley, California, United States Driving Digital Transformation and Innovation. Owning and executing the roadmap for key internal products, including Expense Management and Field Staff Scheduling & Performance tools. • Product Ownership & Strategy: Define, prioritize, and execute product roadmaps and success metrics within a larger digital transformation initiative, supporting company objectives and growth. • AI & Operational Efficiency: Lead AI initiatives across business functions, achieving a company-wide OKR to improve operational efficiency by at least 30% in 15+ processes across the company, while delivering as good or better outcomes. • Cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with business stakeholders, end users, offshore engineering, UX, data, and C-level team to align product strategy, optimize workflows, and deliver user-centric solutions. • Technology & Process Modernization: Contribute to the rebuild of our in-house ERP system and guiding the modernization of our accounting software, ensuring scalable and efficient solutions. • Data-Driven Decision Making: Conduct market research, stakeholder interviews, and data analysis to inform product development, drive feature adoption, and enhance user engagement. • Execution & Agile Delivery: Own product-specific metrics, execute sprints, support releases, and ensure continuous iteration through Agile methodologies, balancing the long-term vision with iterative, data-driven improvements. Ultimately unlocking each business area's ability to focus on their core strengths and passions, and deliver their best work. ### Technology Team Lead - Global Guest Experience | Quality, Crisis Management & Conflict Resolution @ Backroads Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | Berkeley, California, United States Led the integration of AI and Human-in-the-Loop technologies, optimizing business processes and leveraging staff and guest data to enhance global customer experience. • Spearheaded change management initiatives that streamlined internal department operations, resulting in an immediate 30% increase in efficiencies and providing more time dedicated to personalized guest experience, and "high-touch" service quality. • Developed a system to quantify qualitative guest experience feedback, overcoming challenges of not only the type of data but also the volume and complexity of it. This dramatically improves our understanding of the guest experience which we can quickly view and digest from a micro to macro level, surface trends, and drive immediate actionable improvements. • This technology implementation and showcase led to the creation of a R&D team focused on applying AI tools across various business functions. We owned (and hit) a Company-wide OKR to deliver at least 30% operational efficiency in at least 15 processes across the company, while delivering as good or better outcomes. • Conducted company-wide quality control, crisis management, and conflict resolution for multi-day travel experiences, deploying timely strategies to address customer feedback and staff emergencies, which contributed to maintaining our record-high Net Promoter Score. • Worked cross-functionally with Executives and field leaders to ensure superior outcomes for 60,000+ guests on 4,500+ annual trips across 55 countries, significantly boosting customer satisfaction. ### Regional Manager | North America & Asia, Pacific and Africa - Trip Development @ Backroads Jan 2019 – Jan 2023 | Berkeley, California, United States Global Learning and Development, Strategic Sourcing 2022-2023: Regional Manager for the regions of Eastern USA & Canada 2020-2022: Asia-Pacific-Africa Consultant 2019-2020: Regional Manager for the regions of Asia-Pacific-Africa • Managed remote teams on over 25 itineraries running complex logistics and staffing needs in 20 countries, with over 3500 guests per year in our HQ. • Responsible for ~10 direct reports of Operations and Trip experts in the field, including mentorship, training, and annual performance reviews. • Worked cross-departmentally at Backroads to achieve the highest possible quality for all trips within the set regions requiring excellent trip design, communication skills, and time management in a fast-paced environment. • Provided real-time crisis management for on-trip issues and follow-up as needed, post-trip. Responsible for all itinerary quality control within the region to drive performance, productivity, and profitability. • Oversaw budget & pricing process to ensure trips stayed within the forecast. • Built and improved relationships with DMCs, hotels, restaurants, and other partners, oversaw international contract creation and negotiation. • Researched & designed new and custom trips and identified ways to add and improve existing trips. • Assisted with staffing schedule reviews and acted as a mentor and performance manager for field-based staff requiring strong interpersonal skills and the use of in-depth feedback loops. • Helped Marketing & Sales with accuracy & compelling information and strategies to increase our guest count and product growth within the regions. • Vetted and troubleshoot trip development data quality on ERP launch / IT software upgrade. ### Hiring and Training Development Coach | Enablement and Onboarding @ Backroads Jan 2014 – Jan 2023 | Global • Trained, coached, and mentored crisis management, stress mitigation, and best practices for luxury group travel leadership, project management and product management • Supervised 10-15 employees, empowering them to reach their full potential through genuine relationship building, individualized mentoring and ongoing professional development • Established and fostered trust-based relationships, coached and educated top talent and future company leaders, conducted performance reviews, and encouraged a reciprocal feedback-driven culture. • Mentored and supervised staff with the Radical Candor method - caring personally and challenging directly. • Acted as an intermediary for remote field leaders, and Berkeley-based management to provide clarity, direct feedback, and resources to resolve real-time trip, operations, scheduling and interpersonal-related challenges. • as a team, built and maintained an enablement strategy to keep customer-facing roles aligned with the messaging, skills, and values of the company. ### Travel Product Manager | People Operations: Trip Design, Development and Performance @ Backroads Jan 2013 – Jan 2021 | Global 2019-2021: Japan & South Korea Regional Expert, Trip Expert, Operations Expert 2013-2021: Eastern Canada Regional Expert, Trip(s) Expert, Operations Expert 2017-2019: Myanmar Trip Expert, Operations Expert 2015-2017: Vietnam & Cambodia Trip(s) Expert, Operations Expert • Autonomously pitched, developed, designed, implemented and maintained every aspect of 6-10 day active travel vacations. Held a high standard of social and environmental responsibility balanced with the delivery of exceptional client experiences • Directly contributed to over 500% growth in Nova Scotia sales over a five-year window (2014: 10 trips, 120 guests and 6 field staff; 2018: 50 trips, 600 guests and 25 field staff) • Responsible for maintaining budgets and contracts exceeding 1 million USD annually per region • Defined and integrated “the magic" and substance in BACKROADS trips, which contributed to rapid growth, retention and increasing Net Promoter Scores, season over season • Mentored new Trip and Operations Experts and trip leaders, administered training in the management of cultural sensitivity, subcontractor relationships, guest relations, contract negotiation, navigation of internal systems, software, and budgeting • Planned and conducted regional field staff meetings and managed 25+ trip leaders through multiple overlapping trips each season • Authored and maintained resources, documents and playbooks with proficiency on Microsoft 365 and Adobe Creative Suites for internal and external stakeholders that communicated itinerary specifics. These included, among others: o budget guidelines and projections, o client-focused detailed daily planners and overviews, o engaging interpretative visual resources, o navigation and mapping tools, o In-depth playbooks employees rely on to lead the product independently, allowing the business to scale. • Generated advertising content and marketing materials for use in print, web and on various social media platforms. ### International Tour Design Consultant & Tour Director @ Backroads Jan 2013 – Jan 2021 | Global Austria, Bhutan, Botswana, Cambodia, Canada, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech, France, Italy, Indonesia, Japan, Myanmar, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, USA, Vietnam • Performed in the 90th percentile of 700 peers, with an average Customer Satisfaction Score of 9.9/10, while leading or supporting nearly 100 weeklong cycling, hiking and multi-sport luxury travel cultural emersion trips. • Consulted on trip design and managed all aspects of trips in progress including guiding, guest relations, safety, logistics, cultural elements, food preparation, and trip budget. • Delivered a service-focused guest experience through excellent leadership and communication skills using high level initiative, maturity and keen problem-solving skills • Operated with proactive attention to detail, a team-player mindset, an innate understanding of people and a high level of energy to deal with the rapidly changing demands of the position. • Worked as an intermediary between various cultures, local teams, subcontractors and general public to Interface, problem-solve and foster positive relationships. • Provided engaging and informative orientation speeches and interpretive discussions on a wide range of social, political and environmental topics. • Experienced with disaster and conflict management; Natural disasters, medical first-aid, sociopolitical and relational matters. ### Field Operations Manager @ Backroads Jan 2013 – Jan 2020 | Global • Secured, rented, established and maintained staff housing and remote office spaces in multiple locations around the world. • Managed yearly Provincial commercial vehicle registration, safety and maintenance of up to 10 vans with trailer units. • Configured and maintained a staffed warehouse for secure storage for hundreds of thousands of dollars of inventory. • Worked collaboratively with operations headquarters to ensure on-time delivery and arrival of supplies, meet and exceed budget and timing goals. Maintained and tracked a fleet of equipment and controlled for quality and safety; created efficient solutions for time-sensitive operational changes ### Corporate Event Manager and Designer @ Backroads Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Vietnam Worked on a team of five collaborators to design, coordinate, and manage all aspects of an 8-day conference, vacation and party for 400+ clients. • Problem solved and improvised altering 85% of the entire event on the fly due to a major typhoon • Ensured a safe and positive experience for attendees during a natural disaster • Designed all routes and activities, negotiated contracts, permits, hotels, fairgrounds, food vendors, lighting, entertainment, etc. • Hosted and Acted as emcee for 400+ people • Hired and managed a team of 15+ to help run the event • Managed ~$250,000 USD + budget. Kept costs down while not sacrificing the quality of experience ### Travel Technology Product Consultant, Senior Travel Curator @ Origin Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands Origin is a tech travel startup on a mission to offer members an unmatched personalized way to explore the world in a human and AI-enabled way • Consulted and worked on a remote team re-imagining and shaping the future of travel through an inhouse tech-enabled service • Helped develop bespoke travel products and impactful improvements in the travel experience for Origin members • Refined the membership experience, developed feedback loops, assisted in the UX/UI and helped with Product Market Fit ### Program Coordinator @ GPI Atlantic Jan 2008 – Jan 2013 | Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada GPI Atlantic is a nonprofit organization that creates measurement tools and collects and manages psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology and environmental science data. GPI has produced more than 80 carefully-researched reports on topics within the six main categories that make up the Genuine Progress Index; Living standards, population health, time use, community vitality, education and environmental quality. The Genuine Progress Index (GPI) is built to pair with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to help further analyze data and implement research-based sustainable development projects. This helps properly value social, economic and environmental assets and assists leaders in business, government and communities in using the GPI perspective in their decision-making. At GPI I was employed as a program coordinator, researcher, event developer, videographer and content creator for the Sustainable Economics Institute. For periods of this time between contracts, when we didn't have funding, I regularly volunteered with the organization. ### Community Art Facilitator: "Art Biker" @ 4Cs Foundation Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada The Art Bikers program is a mobile community arts program designed to provide free arts programming at a community level that brakes down barriers and is accessible to all. It is intended to address barriers to participation and engagement with the arts by removing systemic socio-economic and socio-psychological barriers. The Art Bikers program was developed to address two needs within the 4Cs Foundation: · to build an understanding and appreciation of community arts as a tool of social change. · to train artists to become community arts facilitators. The Art Bikers team are trained community arts facilitators equipped with bicycles and trailers full of art making materials who travel to neighbourhoods throughout Halifax. Upon arriving at a community site (usually a park or other "green" space) the team set up and facilitate collaborative, art activities with the public. No registration is necessary - participation is entirely voluntary. The program is free of charge and open to all ages and all abilities. ### Respite Worker @ Nova Scotia Department of Community Services: Disability Support Program Jan 2008 – Jan 2012 | Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Worked with individuals who required medical, mental, or psychological assistance ## Education ### Bachelor of Fine Arts - BFA in Interdisciplinary | Intermedia | Multimedia Nova Scotia College of Art and Design ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/martintonner --- Source: https://flows.cv/martintonner JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/martintonner/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-05