unrivaled strategy expertise, powered by decades of travel experience
The team at Awestruck Incentives combines world-class growth strategy experience with award-winning travel design expertise to go beyond booking as your strategic event partners.
The Awestruck Incentives Experts
meet our unique leadership team
MORE THAN TRAVEL ADVISORS
At Awestruck Incentives, we are able to deliver a different kind of event travel experience because we are a different kind of team.
Our leadership brings a rare, unique combination of skills to the event travel industry: deep-rooted travel expertise fused with top-tier strategic thinking.
Jenene, our founder and Chief Executive Officer, spent over 16 years designing high-impact events and incentive programs for thousands of clients across the globe. Meanwhile, Alexis, our Chief Growth Officer, built a career as one of the fastest promoted managers in McKinsey & Company history, leading growth strategy transformations for some of the world’s most recognized Fortune 100 brands.
This unprecedented dual focus – travel execution and industry-leading business strategy – means that our team is uniquely situated to do more than book trips. We focus in on your broader business goals, help you shape your travel agenda to meet those objectives, then design experiences to deliver real results.
Awestruck Incentives brings a level of strategic thinking and thought partnership that most travel companies simply aren’t built to offer, and it’s what makes our approach so unique.
Founder, chief executive officer
JENENE MEALEY
Jenene is a 16-year industry veteran who specializes in curated group travel experiences for high-end, discerning clientele. She has been recognized among the top 10% of travel advisors in North America.
Jenene has managed thousands of travelers across corporate retreats, meetings, and incentive events on multiple contents for nearly two decades. From 15-person leadership retreats to 350+ annual incentive events, Jenene delivers personalized, white-glove service and has built her business on treating every client like her own team. This service commitment has kept her clients coming back over the years, and she is proud to have ongoing 15+ year relationships with some of her earliest clients.
Jenene has developed a reputation as an elite travel "fixer": there is no problem that she cannot solve with her top industry relationships, and nothing that is truly off limits to her clients.
Alexis did not foresee her career landing her in travel. In fact, she first envisioned herself (and started her career) in the corporate halls of the same kind of clients she would go on to serve as a travel partner.
Alexis graduated from Harvard University and spent the first portion of her career as a manager with McKinsey & Company, where she specialized in leading 9- to 10-figure growth and procurement transformations for leading global brands.
After doing more than her fair share of corporate travel and exploring the MICE space, Alexis left her McKinsey career to reimagine Awestruck Incentives for one simple reason: she wanted to put the strategy back into corporate travel, and help executives see travel as the growth lever it can be when executed correctly.
Using the same principles that she deployed in transformations with Fortune 100 leaders, Alexis developed and leads our unique Awestruck Incentives strategy offering with her hands-on approach to coaching travel decision-makers and empowering planning teams to execute high-impact programs.
Alexis berlin
chief growth officer
Senior groups manager
MELISSA MERRITT
Melissa has an eye for detail like no other. Her exceptional organizational skills and optimistic attitude keep our clients at ease from start to finish. With over 20 years of experience in event and travel management, including sales meetings, incentive programs, product launches, celebrity appearances, and destination weddings, Melissa ensures a seamless and stress-free planning process for our corporate groups.
Melissa spent over a decade with Verizon Wireless, where she managed corporate events, sponsorships, and C-level briefings, and later oversaw retail operations strategy for the Northeast. For the past decade, Melissa has combined her event planning expertise with her love of travel, organizing and managing group trips of all shapes and sizes.
Melissa leads back-end support for Awestruck Incentive groups for seamless reservation management and always lends an expert, adventurous set of eyes to Awestruck Incentives itineraries (ask her about her drag racing hobby).
Our extended team
SUPPORTED BY 15+ INDEPENDENT ADVISORS
While all of our corporate event services are executive-led, our team is supported by 15+ independent travel designers through the leisure arm of our agency, Travel with Awestruck.
