The Top 25: #24 Christina Heggie, JetBlue Technology Ventures
Christina Heggie is an investment principal at JetBlue Technology Ventures, US-based airline JetBlue’s corporate venturing subsidiary which invests in, incubates and partners early-stage technology startups improving the travel and hospitality experience.
Bonny Simi, president of JetBlue Technology Ventures, said: “Christina, with her unique background, has helped drive the expansion of our investments in the hospitality space. Her experience in and perspective on the sector has earned us a seat at the table when it comes to all the exciting innovation shaking up the traditional hospitality industry. Christina has proven to have an impressive intuition for smart investments and has led several excellent hospitality-related deals.”
At JetBlue Technology Ventures, Heggie has led and closed investments in five portfolio companies – Recharge, Skyhour, Lumo, Redeam, and Unicoaero – and continues to support them as a board observer. She said: “CVC can balance financial and strategic results, so we make great partners for entrepreneurs. We can remove roadblocks and make connections within an industry that startups might have a hard time navigating independently.”
She shows consideration particularly for Redeam, a digital ticketing and redemption provider for suppliers of tours and activities, as the company is “tackling one of the messiest parts of the tourism and activities industry – eliminating the need for individual paper vouchers” and it is partnering JetBlue Technology Ventures “to expand its solution to air travel use cases”. She introduced Redeam to airport and airline stakeholders and facilitated the process to build its application further into new verticals.
On the other hand, Heggie thinks handling hotel booking mobile app Recharge, the first startup she brought into the portfolio, has been her biggest challenge. Shortly after investment, the company needed an executive to navigate growth decisions, new market hires and organisational structure. Heggie served as an interim chief operating officer for a few months and helped the team tackle some of these important questions.
As the number of CVCs increases, she sees clear processes, transparency and collaboration to be priorities, applying both internally for a corporate venturing unit and across CVCs. She added: “We also cannot forget that the entrepreneur is just as much our client as the unit’s sponsoring corporation.”
Heggie has a bachelor of science degree in hotel administration with a summa cum laude distinction from Cornell University. Upon her graduation in 2010, she spent three years as an associate consultant at US-based management consulting firm AT Kearney before attending Stanford University’s graduate school of business to receive her MBA in 2015.
She has also worked at leisure facilities provider Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and online property rental marketplace operator Airbnb. Before assuming her current role at JetBlue Technology Ventures in 2016, she was a senior marketing manager at travel tech startup Checkmate until it was acquired by Germany-based social media monitoring database TrustYou.
