Barrie Howard
VP Global Sponsorship
Visa International

In 1991, Barrie Howard joined the organization as a Service Quality Manager in Visa USA. Her responsibilities were to manage third party vendors providing customer service assistance to Visa cardholders.

Barrie’s first interaction with Visa’s global sponsorships began with the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games. She was responsible for implementing and managing the Visa Customer Service Center during the Games. The Center was strategically located near the Olympic stadium and serviced over 50,000 customers.

From the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games, Barrie transferred to the Visa Tokyo office to direct all project management for the operational implementation of the Nagano 1998 Winter Olympic Games. She managed the selection and buildout of the Visa Customer Center and Visa Command Center, and day to day operation of these locations. Other responsibilities included staff logistics and operations for approximately 70 Visa staff working on the Games. Additionally, she worked with the Visa Tokyo Marketing team to implement Member activation and partnership marketing programs with the sponsorship.

The next Olympic Games took Barrie to Sydney, Australia to work with the Visa Sydney office to manage the operations and logistics of the Visa sponsorship along with support of marketing efforts with Members and Merchant partners for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. In 2000, Barrie returned back to the Visa International headquarters in Foster City continuing work on all global sponsorships (e.g. Rugby World Cup, Olympic and Paralympic Games). She worked with the Visa London office to implement all operations and logistics for the Olympic Games held in Europe (Athens 2004 and Torino 2006). Other responsibilities include supporting Visa Asia Pacific and Visa Latin America with their leveraging efforts with the Member banks and Merchants. Barrie worked on a new wave marketing initiative targeted at the tech savy, Gen Y audience called Visa Championships – Torino 2006.

This was an Olympic online video game launched in 23 markets globally with the national winner from each country winning a trip to the Torino 2006 Winter Olympic Games. Coming off of the success of the Torino 2006 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games for Visa, Barrie relocated to Beijing, China to work with the Visa China and Asia Pacific teams for the spectacular and successful implementation of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Barrie’s recent move to London will be to continue as the Head of Operations for all global sponsorships (Olympics and FIFA), and support the infrastructure development of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

MAYANK SRIVASTAVA
PGDM 1st SEM.
YEAR 2009-11