and Airbus Defence and Space. Geoff has also managed travel programmes for HP and Intel in the UK.

He has spoken at many travel conferences, and has been a judge for The Business Travel Awards.

Geoff is married, has 4 grown up children, leads a youth church and enjoys cycling.

Prior to this Simone held the CEO position at ITM responsible for the commercial and strategic success of the association. The ITM represents more than 3000 buyer and supplier members from the travel industry and is the UK partner of GBTA.

Simone has both national and global experience previously holding senior positions at Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Rosenbluth International and HRG.

Keesup Choe is the CEO of PredictX, a SaaS company using AI and machine learning to drive predictive action to leverage growth within companies.

Keesup’s particular passion is empowering stakeholders to make better decisions. By discovering meaning in their data and automating routine tasks, Keesup believes stakeholders can have both the time and improved understanding to innovate and drive company-wide growth.

Prior to PredictX, Keesup has worked in the fields of finance and software. He has run his own hedge fund and acted as head of trading for major investment banks in the City and Wall Street. He has also successfully grown startup software companies in Silicon Valley and London.

She has over 20 years' experience in the travel industry including airline Pricing & Revenue management with major airlines. Gehan holds a BSc. Business studies with Travel Management focus and MBA from Edinburgh Business School, Heriot Watt University.

Gehan is a member of the GBTA Europe Aviation committee and formal president of GBTA Europe 2015-2017

Prior to joining Chrome River, Felix spent many years as a technology consultant working for many of Germany’s most prestigious companies across a broad range of industries, including Audi, e.on, Commerzbank and Volkswagen.

Felix has a degree in Engineering from Technische Universität Ilmenau in Germany.

Prior to joining Aviation Economics in 1998, Tim worked for Aer Lingus, reporting directly to the Chief Executive, on the project that was to conclude with the airline joining the oneworld strategic alliance. He previously worked for 10 years with NatWest Markets in the top-rated transport equity research team where he carried out major equity transactions for BAA, KLM and Lufthansa, and advisory assignments for British Airways and Iberia. His first job, after leaving university with a degree in Transport Economics, was with British Aerospace in the BAe 146 sales department.

Since joining Aviation Economics, Tim has carried out assignments with a value in excess of $200bn for investment banks, private equity firms, airlines and airports. In the airline sector, he has worked on projects with Air Arabia, easyJet, Ryanair and Wizz. He has extensive experience both on the buy-side and the sell-side of airport transactions, including the new Istanbul Airport, London City Airport, Moscow Domodedovo, Rio de Janeiro and São Paolo airports. Tim also worked closely with the Heathrow Hub team on the third runway proposal.

Tim has strong links with the financing community having been engaged by banks and investors including, Aéroports de Paris, CSFB, Deutsche Bank, DVB, Macquarie, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Canada and VINCI Airports. Tim has also advised the UK’s Department of Transport on route development funds.

Tim is a visiting lecturer at City University of London where he teaches the Air Transport Economics module to MSc students, and also at Loughborough University where he lectures Airline Business Models to post- and under-graduate students.

A qualified business psychologist, Jonti has a master’s degree in organisational psychology and extensive experience as a business change and digital transformation consultant. Drawing on a rare combination of expertise as a business psychologist and human-centred designer, he has previously delivered behaviour-based savings in a range of settings, including local government, utilities and insurance.

He has extensive experience and proven results in growing the P&L for the consulting business at American Express in Europe. Significant cross-industry experience covering the Financial & Professional Services, Media & Technology, Pharma, Energy, FMCG, and Industrial. Raj has in-depth expertise of many areas within the travel sector – from hotel, airline, business travel management, to travel technology and online solutions. He spent many years in senior roles at Radius Travel, Amex and Carlson Wagonlit. He is currently Vice President Sales and Business Development at dcs plus.

FCTG’s Indian presence comprises the market-leading FCM and Corporate Traveller brands, the fast-growing Travel Tours retail network, the Travel Money India currency business, the Travel Air Representations wholesale operation and the FCMIncoming South Asian DMC.

Rakshit has degrees in business related disciplines from the London School of Economics, Griffith University in Australia and Sydenham College, Mumbai. He is frequently quoted on industry and economic issues, is a regular speaker at trade events and also featured in the 2015 Edition of the Economic Times - Spencer Stuart 'top 40 under forty' business leaders list, an honour for which he, sadly, will never qualify again.

Presently she is a member of the GBTA European Meetings and Events Committee, supporting the membership with SMMP matters, and sharing her thoughts on procurement driven approach to meetings and events strategies.

Bobbi’s current role is Global Category Manager Meetings, Events, and Tradeshows, at Dentsply Sirona, the world’s largest provider of dental solutions, dedicated to empowering dental professionals to provide better, safer, faster dental care.

Sandra has 20 years’ experience holding senior positions across travel, hospitality, retail and facilities management industries.  Sandra started her career at LTA, an airline and travel wholesaler based in Caracas, Venezuela, taking on the role of Operation’s Manager.

Dan Fitzgerald is the Chief Product Officer for Traveldoo, an Expedia Group company, responsible for the product strategy, design, and execution of the Traveldoo web and mobile solutions for business travel and expense report management. Working closely with the R&D and Product teams, Dan has the challenge of designing products to meet the changing needs of both the traveller and the corporate as the market moves to a more consumer led approach in the development of business applications.

Sam is author of several management books which emphasize the importance and benefits of inspiring people. He has an advisory role in boardrooms that realize a fine culture is an important business essential and moneymaker and makes sure that companies don’t lose touch with their customers or what makes the customer happy.   Sam is a former member of the Belgian karate team, was CEO of various technical service companies and founded his consulting company Perfect Talent in 2010. He considers himself as his customers’ wingman. 

Prior to joining AZ, Kerrie was the Global Hotel & Meetings Manager at BP, with responsibility for the creation of a meetings management strategy and policy. This included a review of booking and payment processes and a global RFP with the appointment of a global venue finding agency.

Kerrie has enjoyed a varied career in the travel industry spanning 25+ years, having worked in buyer and supplier roles including tour operations management, sales & marketing, international conference & logistics management and International Account Management.

Kevin has won almost every major industry award in both business travel and the meetings and events industries. In July, he was just named for the third time in five years one of the Top 25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry 2018 from Successful Meetings magazine. Other recent accolades include the 2016 MPI Rise Award for Meetings Industry Leadership, the Changemakers Award for MeetingsNet where he was also featured on the June magazine cover, GBTA’s President’s Award, BTN travel manager of the year & GBTA’s rarely awarded Industry Icon Award (he is only one of eight recipients).

He writes a popular award-winning industry blog (Gold Magellan Award for Best Industry Blog from Travel Weekly), published though Meetings & Conventions on-line.

He has two published books to his credit, Strategic Meetings Management: From Theory to Practice published in April 2011 and most recently, Your Personal Brand, Your Power Tool to Build Career Integrity, published in October of 2016. Both are available via Amazon.

Before joining GoldSpring Consulting, Kevin retired from Lanyon in 2016 where he was VP of Industry Strategy. Prior to Lanyon he was senior global category manager in the Hewlett-Packard Global Travel & SMM Team. He has also served as a senior account manager with the Walt Disney Company.

Matthew has overall responsibility for delivering continuous growth for the company by meeting the evolving demand for effective risk management solutions from the world’s most prominent organizations.  

Matthew is a regular speaker at travel and security conferences, discussing and advising on the subjects of travel risk management, corporate governance, duty of care and operational resilience.

Jonathan holds an Economics degree from the University of Toronto, Master’s degree in e-Business from the City University of Hong Kong and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.

With over two decades of experience, Barbara has worked extensively in the travel industry and has established herself as one of its key figures.

With a real passion for the travel sector, Barbara has vast experience of working in both the leisure and business travel industries through her roles at companies such as Air Jet and Holiday Autos.

She joined C&M Recruitment in 1999 as a Recruitment Consultant and progressed to become a Manager, Sales Director and now Director at the company. She sits on the Board and is responsible for the overall running and control of the business, with three offices in the UK and one in Australia. She also currently holds a position on the Board of Directors at the Institute of Travel and Tourism, where she was recently re-elected for another term.

To further demonstrate her standing in the sector, Barbara was added to the AWTE’s Influential Women in Travel list in 2017, was shortlisted for the AWTE Honorary Award in 2016 and was included in Women 1st’s Top 100 Most Influential Women in Hospitality, Leisure, Travel & Tourism in 2011.

“Anything we can build in our minds, we can create in reality!”.

He is passionate about the intrinsic motivation of human beings. Which drove him to developed Profiscore’s Cultural Language Toolbox, a innovative and disruptive toolbox for profiling and psychometric analytics.

The 38-year-old business administration graduate looks back on a career at BCD Travel Germany GmbH - from training as a travel agent to sales management as Head of Sales & Account Manager - and completed her part-time studies with a thesis on "Travel Management in Transition - Opportunities and Risks".

With more than 19 years of experience in the business travel industry, especially in operation, sales & account and sales, she has a wide range of knowledge in mobility and travel management and the corresponding networks. She was therefore elected as Vice President Business Travel & Mobility of the Travel Industry Club in 2016. She moderates symposia, networkings, conducts panel discussions and is in demand as a speaker at conferences and meetings.

Operating as an independent industry consultant for over 10 years, Jo has engaged with clients across the globe on a number of interesting and diverse projects delivering strategy, sourcing and change management.

In addition to her consulting work, Jo also writes and delivers industry training focussed on working with travel procurement, articulating value, strategic selling and negotiation skills and stakeholder influencing.

In 2015 Jo and her business partner Monique Swart founded Nina & Pinta, a strategic consulting and accredited training company.

Nicola’s career spans more than 2 decades in business travel, including buyer and supplier roles in the USA & UK, with responsibilities across the Americas, EMEA and APAC. Nicola served on the Institute of Travel Management Board between 2010-2016, and was Chairman 2012-2014.

He previously worked for PerkinElmer as a customer care team manager and also once headed up the sales division of a cross-European travel and tourism publisher. Prior to moving to Poland he held management and training positions at WHSmith and Carphone Warehouse.

With previous experience in airlines, GDS and corporate travel, he contributed to the development of NetJets Europe Travel Department from the very beginning.

NetJets Europe Travel Department is considered by the travel industry in Portugal as one of the most innovative in terms of processes, automation and best practices.

NetJets Travel Department was awarded 3 times as most innovative company on Corporate Travel Management in Portugal and Helder was awarded in 2011 the SVN American Express TravelStore Business Travel Awards as Travel Manager of the Year.

Head of Kennedys’ travel team, since 2012 Claire has been listed as a 'Super Lawyer' in the Telegraph's rankings in the field of Travel and Transport. Since 2000, she has been consistently listed in Chambers and Partners and The Legal 500, as a ‘leading lawyer’ in the fields of travel litigation and defendant injury litigation. She has been retained by TUI (Thomson Holidays), and a number of other high profile tour operators since 1995.

Claire has been advising the Travel and Tourism industry for over 20 years on all manner of issues and litigation, including the Tunisian Terrorist Attack Inquests, hotel accidents, overseas accidents and injuries whilst on holiday, drowning’s and catastrophic injuries sustained in pools or from balcony falls, hurricanes, mountaineering and climbing accidents, and sickness outbreaks.

Claire provides a 24/7 crisis response service to a number of corporate tourism clients and has handled a wide range of incidents including child abduction/disappearance from a hotel, child drownings, polar bear mauling, Panorama coverage of alleged abuse, the UK’s largest hotel fire in Newquay, and provides Crisis Management Workshops and Crisis Management assistance to over 100 Tour Operators and Agents.

Claire’s team are winners for Transport: Firm (Specialism) of the Year – for ‘Travel’ in The Legal 500 UK Awards 2017 and Claire was named as Best UK Travel Lawyer by bestlawyers.com in 2018. The team currently act for over 400 tour operators and agents

As Travel Manager EMEA Katharina had strategic and operational ownership of the United Technologies Corporation (UTC) travel program in the EMEA region. Across a complex setup of over 300 local entities in more than 30 countries she created global synergies all the while ensuring local program acceptance. Katharina managed supplier contracts and relationships for travel agency and booking tools, corporate card, airlines, hotels, car rental, GDS and the emergency assistance provider.

To ensure continuous engagement and communication with her >8000 travellers Katharina built a strong internal network with key functional stakeholders, cooperated with internal audit and setup standard work around travel products and processes. 

A German native, Katharina has established her home base in Paris, France.

Carol graduated with an MSc in Facilities Management at Westminster University and is CIPS-qualified. Carol has also held Board Director and Advisory roles. Her aim is to be 'best in class' in whatever she does and work inclusively with her travellers and suppliers with honesty and integrity.

Douglas is now the CEO and owner of Inntel, which employs over 125 staff at its headquarters in the South of England. Since he took over the business in 2001, annual turnover has grown organically by over 400% and is now over £65 million. Inntel’s clients are some of the UK’s largest organisations and include FTSE100. The company completes over 300,000 transactions annually and develops market leading technology specifically for their clients.

Douglas takes on many voluntary industry positions. He is currently on the advisory panel for the UK’s largest Meetings conference and the UK’s largest Business Travel conference. In 2016 he was elected Chair of the GBTA Europe Meetings Committee. His role is to ensure GBTA Europe maintain a focus on Meetings & Events content throughout its education, training and white paper activity.

In his spare time O’Neill enjoys running and especially completing marathons, 15 to date. He also has a passion for the hills and completed a 214 mile cycle and running race across Scotland in 2016 and in 2015 he climbed the three highest peaks in the UK in the single day. Many of these activities are to raise money for local charities, including St Helena Hospice in Colchester and East Anglia’s Children’s Hospice.

Prior to this, she held a number of senior management positions at some of the world’s largest companies including Customer Operations Director at Mercedez-Benz, as well as 3 Non-Executive Directorships in the public sector including the Department of Transport and DEFRA.

Prior to working in the travel industry, Adrian held various senior management sales and distribution roles in the FMCG industry.

With 7 years’ experience of working within the corporate travel payments sector, Jay has worked within a range of industries including sport & leisure, retail, transport, hospitality and manufacturing. Jay has dedicated his time to help organisations manage the payment and reconciliation of their corporate travel spend in the most cost effective and efficient manner possible.

Sean has travelled extensively to Africa, the Middle East and Asia. By doing so, Sean has learnt the need for travel advice to be practical and flexible; as even the best made plans can easily fall apart. Additionally, having grown up a British citizen in France, Sean has a unique viewpoint on what leaving the EU will mean for Britain, British travellers and both British and EU expats living on either side of the channel.

Heather has over 25 years travel industry experience. Prior to joining ABTA in 2015 she worked for a number of years for a major international airline in a range of operational roles, including crisis management.

In 2015, Chris was named as a 'top industry influencer' by Buying Business Travel Magazine, in part, for his work in producing ground breaking white papers on how to manage business travel in both the Middle East and in Africa.

Chris holds an MSc. in Strategic Procurement and is a full member of the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (MCIPS) where he is a branch Vice Chair.

Carol has been consulting with clients in this challenging sector for the past 10 years, working with organisations of varying sizes of travel programme scope – global, regional, national, big and small. Carol specialises in travel RFPs and implementations, along with travel policy and operational reviews. Recently, Carol was engaged by a global client to actively lead the multi-national implementation of a new TMC travel supplier into 70+ countries, 33 of which included the implementation of an online booking tool.

She lectures and conducts research to uncover new, inspiring insights that are truly valuable; is a certified psychological coach in emotional intelligence, values, performance, stress, health and wellbeing; loves using her knowledge to help professionals who travel for work (e.g. frequent flyers, business travellers, airline staff, expatriates etc.) to achieve healthy bodies, happy minds, energised connections, positive living and successful working; plus working with organisations to improve capability, synergistically integrating science to enhance wellbeing of people, cultures and approaches.

Lucy lives and breathes wellbeing - including as a part-time TV presenter on adventure sports, writing occasionally for newspapers/magazines on the topic, even appearing on the front cover of the biggest selling triathlon magazine. She clears the mind with medicinal nutrition, trail running, mountain sports and training for iron-man triathlon, balanced with yoga, exploring the world and burying her head in books.

Prior to consulting, Nikki was the Global Travel manager at Symantec, responsible for the strategic management of the global travel programme in 35 countries. This included the management of the overall programme and policy, supplier relationship management, process efficiency, driving savings, customer experience, mitigating risk and managing an internal team. Whilst in this position Nikki was awarded the ITM 2017 Multi-National Travel Manager of the year award.

Isabelle joined Marriott in 2011 as an Account Director and was quickly promoted to Director Global Sales, France. In this role, she headed up the Marriott Global Sales team in France looking after all business segments and developing strategic partnerships with key accounts. In 2016, Isabelle’s achievements were recognised when she was announced as the Global Sales Leader of the Year! 

She speaks 4 different languages (French, English, German and Spanish) and holds a Bachelor’s degree of Science in International Hospitality Management from Ecole hotelière de Lausanne.

including Amnesty International, The AA and Bacardi. Later this year they are due to launch their fan engagement platform 'AGAME.ai' having identified an opportunity within the sports fan engagement market through their work with a top European soccer club, AS Roma.

Optimum ROI is an AI driven software platform designed to offer personalised, scalable automated PPC solutions for Travel.

In 2015 he launched consultancy Festive Road, www.festive-road.com

He has been listed in the UK’s Buying Business Travel Hotlist and twice listed as one of the world’s top 25 business travel industry influencers by the Business Travel News, USA, for work in advocacy and sustainability.

In 2017 he was appointed to the GBTA board as the first ever elected international director. He is based in Surrey in the UK.

Prior to that, he worked at Swiss in Zurich in Network Planning and Pricing & Revenue Management departments. He started his carrier as pricing analyst at Air France and as an intern with United Airlines in Chicago. Mr. Touraine holds a degree in Aeronautical Engineering from École Nationale de l’Aviation Civile in Toulouse (France).

In 2011 Kush took up responsibility for online at Travel and Transport Statesman, advancing quickly to extend his duties across implementations, booking systems, agent tools and processes.

Mark has held previous positions as a Principal at Advito, the consulting division of BCD Travel, and at IBM in the Business Transformation Outsourcing practice where he was responsible for client-facing activities including the development and implementation of strategic sourcing.

Mark has 25 years of experience in business travel management, beginning in the late 1980s working for WorldTravel Partners (now BCD Travel), followed by 10 years as the Director of Travel for Price Waterhouse and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Prior to his work in travel management, Mark worked for Price Waterhouse in the tax practice where he was responsible for federal and state income tax planning for several major corporate and individual clients. Mark began his career in the front office of the Atlanta Braves where he was responsible for various accounting functions in the baseball operation.

Mark is a Certified Public Accountant, has a Bachelor’s degree in Accountancy from Wake Forest University, a Master of Taxation degree from Georgia State University, and is a former president of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE).

Dots & Lines provides services including marketing strategy, brand management, event marketing, and public relations, among others, to clients.

Katharine currently serves as the Co-Chair of the GBTA Ladders Media & Communications Committee and was a member of the winning Ladders team in 2017. She also previously served as a member of the WINiT Conference & Event Planning Committee and was a WINiT mentee from 2016 to 2017.

Prior to taking the helm at Dots & Lines, Katharine served as the Director of Marketing and Communications for GoldSpring Consulting. She joined the company in June 2015 after receiving her MBA from Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.