Fay Beauchine leads Carlson Marketing’s Business Loyalty team that helps corporations gain and retain enthusiastic employees, committed and aligned business partners, and loyal customers.  Prior to joining Carlson Marketing in 2007, Fay was Senior Vice President, Enterprise Strategic Account Management for Carlson, where she was responsible for cross-enterprise strategies focused on driving profitable revenue growth.  Before Carlson, Fay served as Vice President of Sales and Customer Care and Vice President of Reservations for Northwest Airlines. Fay directed Northwest and KLM Royal Dutch Airline’s North American passenger sales strategies targeted to corporations, the U.S. government, travel management companies, meeting and event companies, cruise lines, global tour operators, incentive companies and associations. She also was instrumental in developing Sky Team’s passenger alliance strategies within North America and was an active proponent of global alliance network value for business travelers.

Fay is a founding member of the USTravel MEI Coalition and served as past president and founder of the Site International Foundation. She is past president of the Society of Incentive Travel Executives and of the National Business Travel Association Foundation (now GBTA), and former chair of the Greater Minneapolis Convention and Visitors Association.  Fay will be inducted into the Convention Industry Council’s Hall of Leaders in 2011 as one of the most outstanding leaders and innovators in the industry, identified as a top Industry Leader by Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal in 2008, recognized three times by Business Travel News as one of the business travel industry’s top 25 most influential executives, received Hong Kong and London’s travel and tourism honors, and called one of Minnesota’s Leading Business Women by Corporate Report.

Joseph Black
Chief Procurement Officer
Aetna, Inc.

Joseph Black is Chief Procurement Officer for Aetna, Inc., one of the nation’s leading diversified health care benefits companies. In this position, he leads the company’s procure-to-pay activities enterprise-wide, impacting over $4 billion in company expense. His responsibilities include Supply Management, Accounts Payable, Meeting Management, Travel, Supplier Diversity, and Expense Policy. During his 20-year tenure at Aetna, Mr. Black held various leadership roles within Procurement and Real Estate. Mr. Black holds a Bachelors of Science degree from Cornell University and an MBA from the University of Connecticut.  He sits on the board of advisors for Institute for Supply Management; the board of Church Homes, Inc: a not-for-profit, nonsectarian corporation, which owns or manages retirement communities; the board of Meadows Real Estate: a not-for-profit community revitalization organization focused on low-income, subsidized housing; and the board of advisors for Connecticut Association of Purchasing Management. He is also a deacon and trustee for the Apostolic Fellowship Church.

Sheri Bonsall

Vice President Corporate Travel, Meetings & Fleet
Chubb & Son

Sheri Bonsall is a vice president and manager, employee mobility management for  Chubb & Son, the premier property and casualty insurance firm headquartered in Warren, New Jersey.  With annual revenues in excess of $13 billion, Chubb ranks 176th on the Fortune 500 employing over 10,000 people in thirty countries. 

In her role as employee mobility manager, Sheri has responsibility and oversight for all aspects of corporate travel, meeting and event services, virtual conferencing services, and fleet management.  

In 2005, Business Travel News named Sheri a Best Practitioner for Meetings by successfully implementing end-to-end automation for transient and meeting travel.  That same year she was profiled in The Aberdeen Group’s “Best Practices in Travel Cost Management” journal, noting her efforts in lowering Chubb’s travel administration expense by 112% through automation and reorganization of the travel department. In 2007, Sheri was recognized as “Fleet Management’s Woman of Influence” by the leading industry trade publication, Fleet Executive. 

Sheri served two consecutive terms as president of the New Jersey Business Travel Association, followed by four years as Chairman of the Board.  She is a two-time recipient of NJBTA’s “Direct Member of the Year”, its highest honor.  During her presidency, she served as a member of the GBTA Chapter Presidents’ Council (CPC), and in 2006, received its’ Professional Service Award in recognition of her dedication and commitment to the chapter and GBTA.  

She is a member of GBTA, ACTE, Automotive Fleet and Leasing Association (AFLA) and NAFA Fleet Management Association.  She has served on numerous Corporate Advisory Boards including American Express, Hyatt Hotels, Continental Airlines, Donlen Corporation and Ford Motor Company.

Maria Chevalier
Global Director of Travel & Meeting Services
Hewlett-Packard

Maria Chevalier has over 25 years of travel industry leadership experience. She is currently the global director of Travel & Meeting Services for HP (Hewlett-Packard). Maria’s prior roles in the industry include Johnson & Johnson’s Global Director of Travel & Meeting Services, BCD Travel Vice President of Hotel Consulting/Relations and COO of The Travel Desk. She is a frequent panelist and requested media source with quotes appearing in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times and other industry publications. She is a board member of Georgia State University Hospitality Board, Business Travel News Editorial Board, and multiple supplier advisory boards. Maria was awarded the “2010 Innovation and Excellence” award from the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) and Business Travel News  2010 Travel Manager of the Year and 2009 Best Practioner.

Tony D'Astolfo
Senior Vice President, Travel Services

Rearden Commerce

A 32-year travel industry veteran, Tony D'Astolfo joined Rearden Commerce, the world’s largest marketplace for services of all kinds, in May of 2004. Prior to joining Rearden, Tony served as Senior Vice President at Sabre-Holdings where he ran Sales and Consulting at GetThere, Sabre’s online business-to-business e-commerce unit. 

Prior to GetThere, Tony enjoyed a successful 19-year career at United Airlines, holding senior sales and customer service positions in New York and New Jersey, and in his last assignment was United’s National Sales Manager for the UK and Ireland. 

Tony is a long time member of GBTA and a former member of the Board of Directors of ACTE, and is a frequent speaker at travel industry conferences both in the US and abroad. 

Linda Doty
Vice President, Sourcing & Procurement
Thomson Reuters
 

Linda Doty has a spent her career in sourcing and procurement, with more than 20 years across several large corporations. She has been with Thomson Reuters for nearly a decade in leadership within the Sourcing organization. Less than two years ago, Linda took on the oversight of the travel category – the sourcing aspects as well as the operational management of the category. Thomson Reuters has approximately 55,000 employees in over 100 countries. The integration between the Thomson and Reuters organizations happened in 2008 and the travel landscape continues to consolidate, providing an opportunity to create the new reality of travel at Thomson Reuters. Linda’s team is driving toward the vision of a truly consolidated and effective global program, implementing changes that consider the holistic end-to-end travel experience, including policy, processes, suppliers, and systems. In addition to travel, Linda also leads the corporate card and expense programs. 

Mike Koetting
Executive Vice President, Supplier Management and Advertising, Global Sales
Concur

Based in Minneapolis, Mike is currently EVP of Advertising and Supplier Management at Concur and is responsible for Concur’s global relationships with airlines, hotels, car, rail and GDS relationships as well as advertising initiatives at TripIt.  Prior to joining Concur in 2010 Mike was with Carlson Wagonlit Travel where he held the positions of North American COO and CFO of the Americas. Mike started his professional career as a CPA at Price Waterhouse in St. Louis and in 1992 joined Maritz Travel company where held a variety of finance and senior management positions before relocating to Minneapolis with Carlson in 2004.

Mike was named one of BTN’s 25 Most Influential Travel Executives in 2006, recently served on the GBTA Foundation board and is a two time Ironman finisher.

Lynne McDonnell
Vice President
A. T. Kearney Procurement & Analytics Solutions

Lynne McDonnell holds over 16 years of experience in strategic sourcing, consulting and management of procurement software implementation services. Lynne has been a senior trusted advisor for clients across many industries, including: gas & electric utilities, airlines, retail and consumer products companies.  Lynne brings strong thought leadership to client engagements, and has a proven track record of leading large client sourcing programs and end to end spend management implementations.  In terms of content, Lynne brings significant depth in sourcing complex services categories across multiple industries.  Lynne has an undergraduate degree in accountancy from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.  

 

Linda McNairy
Vice President, Strategic Partner Management
StarCite

As Vice President, Strategic Partner Management, Linda leads and manages StarCite’s strategic business partnerships with the top meeting and travel management companies as well as American Express Card.

Prior to this position, Linda was VP, Global Account Management heading up a total team of 25 people who interface directly with and drive success with StarCite’s largest customers ensuring successful technology deployments and widespread planner adoption levels.

Linda has over 20 years of experience in the meetings industry including direct corporate planning experience as well as many different roles as a supplier to the industry.  She has a passion for the meeting industry and is driven to constantly elevate its professionalism and make meeting strategies an integral part of the overall organizational success. She currently serves on the GBTA Groups & Meetings Committee where she just completed her 2 year term as the first ever Allied Member Vice Chair. She has also served on the GBTA Strategic Meetings Management Certification Task Force and the GBTA Foundation SMM Maturity Model Task Force. She is also a past President of the Indiana Chapter of Meeting Professionals International. 

Pam McTeer
Director Global Strategic Sourcing
First Data Corporation

Pam has over 30 years experience in procurement, travel and meetings management. Pam’s experience ranges from hotels, airlines, agency owner, corporate sales, operations, account management and meetings and events management for a major travel management company. Pam moved to Colorado from Southern Illinois in 1997 where she joined a major travel management company in developing the Colorado market. This ultimately led to her client hiring her in 2004 to take travel management to a new global level by applying strategic sourcing and account management skills to the complex area of corporate travel and strategic meetings management. The journey continued to Georgia in February of 2010 for a Fortunate 500 company - First Data Corporation to lead the global travel management program.

Pam has her C.P.M, CTC and CCTE certifications and is very active in the industry and the community. Pam has been published in BTN, BTE and Procurement Magazine for her best practices in Corporate Travel and Meetings procurement. She has been the RMBTA Direct Member of the year in 2004, 2007 and 2009. She has served on the GBTA Meetings and Groups Committee 2004-2008, the GBTA Aviation Committee 2009-present and the GBTA Chapter Presidents Council. Pam is the past-President of Rocky Mountain Business Travel Association, a recipient of the 2009 GBTA Business Professional Services Award and was elected at Direct Director at Large on the GBTA Board of Directors in 2009. 

David Meyer
Director, Research &  Media Strategy
Business Travel Media

David Meyer was recently named Director of Research and Media Strategy for Northstar Travel Media’s Business Travel Media Group after serving for 17 years as editor-in-chief of Business Travel News, which provides both print and online content for corporate buyers of travel and meeting services.

In his previous role, Meyer edited the 26-year-old BTN’s monthly news issues, as well as the weekly EuroBTN and BTN Weekly newsletters, and guided the development of content for the Web site BTNOnline.com.

His new role builds on his previous responsibilities for developing and analyzing original research that helps define the business travel and meetings industry, benchmark expenditures and best practices, and drive editorial content appearing in more than one dozen publications annually as well as for recognizing professional excellence and creating content for several annual face-to-face and virtual events.

Before coming to BTN, Meyer was managing editor of the 14 million-circulation Philip Morris Magazine, managing editor of voice and data industry weekly newspaper CommunicationsWeek, news editor for Aviation Week & Space Technology and copy editor for Popular Mechanics.

Christian Savelli

Director of Business intelligence
Maxvantage

As the Director of Business intelligence for Maxvantage, Christian Savelli brings over 10-years of experience in supporting client engagements surrounding both strategic meetings management and event design. Working across all of Maxvantage's client engagements, he provides a number of decision support services surrounding performance benchmarking, aggregate reporting, market trend analysis, and predictive modeling. In addition, Christian founded and continues to further develop one of the industry's leading informational databases for meetings and events. This travel data warehouse provides past, present and forward looking views into the dynamics of the industry, greatly assisting organizations in making the right decisions to drive better performance outcomes. Prior to joining Maritz, Christian spent ten years in the hotel industry where he developed an expertise in yield management as Certified Hotel Administrator. He is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill where he earned an MBA in 2000.

Debi Scholar
President
Scholar Consulting Group

Debi Scholar , President of Scholar Consulting Group and author of SMM: The Strategy Quick Reference Guide consults on strategic meetings management and travel management. She was the PricewaterhouseCoopers Lead for Travel and Entertainment Expenses as she worked for the firm for 13 years.  Her blog, T&E Plus, has been viewed over 17,000 times and was described as a “must-read” resource by an industry trade magazine.  Debi was selected as the one of the top 20 Changemakers in the Industry, one of the Business Travel News Practitioners of the Year and one of the VIPs in the Strategic Meetings Management Industry. 

Dr. Loren C. Scott
Professor Emeritus
Louisiana State University

Dr. Scott is the President of Loren C. Scott & Associates, Inc., a 30-year old economic consulting firm whose clients include such large national firms as BellSouth, Capital One Financial, Entergy, ExxonMobil, J.P. Morgan Chase, and a diversity of others. He is one of the 32-member National Business Economic Issues Council, which meets quarterly to discuss issues of state, national, and international interest. This group has experts who cover international trade, Washington economic policy, retail trade, trucking, steel, chemicals, etc.  Dr. Scott is an energy specialist on the NBEIC. He has been interviewed on CNBC, MSNBC, and Bloomberg TV, in addition to several local TV stations, and his work has been cited in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angles Times, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Financial Times, to name a few. His career started at Louisiana State University in 1969 where he spent the next 33 years, rising through the ranks from assistant professor to the prestigious Freeport McMoran Endowed Chair of Economics and the Director of the Division of Economic Development and Forecasting. Over the thirteen-year period from 1983-96, he was the chairman of the Economics Department at LSU.  During that time, the Department’s ranking among the 3,000 economics departments in the U.S. rose from 101st to 38th.  He is presently Professor Emeritus at LSU. He received 7 awards at LSU for outstanding classroom teaching. He gives 50-70 speeches a year on the state of the economy.

Robin B. Shahani
Senior Vice President, Global Business Services and Chief Procurement Officer
American Express Company

Robin Shahani joined American Express as Senior Vice President and Chief Procurement Officer in April 2010.  In this role, Robin is responsible for all procurement, expense management, and central supplier management activities and staff on a global basis, and is in the process of leading a major transformation of the function.  As a member of the Global Business Services Leadership Team, he is directly involved in extending the scope of shared services at the Company.  Robin also is a member of American Express’ Senior Management Team.

Prior to joining Amex, Robin worked at Citigroup as Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer, and Global Head of Strategy and Planning for Citi Shared Services (CSS), with oversight of nearly 5,500 staff worldwide in key aspects of finance and risk reporting, human resources, procurement, accounts payable, anti-money laundering, and general services operations, as well as right placement (location strategy).  In September 2009, Robin was named Global Co-Head of Procurement, in addition to his CSS responsibilities, with a specific focus on category management, strategic sourcing, supplier performance, and financial performance across roughly $17 billion in annual spending.

Previously, Robin held various senior positions at EquaTerra, a leading independent shared services and outsourcing advisory firm, Deutsche Bank, and Silver Oak Solutions, which he founded in 1999.  Robin began his career as a consultant at Mitchell Madison Group, a Summer Analyst at Morgan Stanley and H.C. Wainwright Economics, and an Intern for U.S. Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II.

Robin graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in History.  He has been based in New York and London for most of his career, but has also worked extensively in Continental Europe and Asia.  Robin serves on the board of directors for APEX New York, an urban education charity, and raises funds for the Children’s Health Fund, which provides healthcare to at-risk American children.

Will Tate
Senior Vice President
Management Alternatives

Management Alternatives is a travel consulting organization founded in 1977 dedicated to assisting only travel buyers and only in the travel purchasing cycle. This cycle ranges from travel policy review through to expense management automation, including RFI, RFP and validation reviews for each and every facet in between. Immediately prior to joining Management Alternatives, Mr. Tate was the global travel manager for a Fortune 250 Company.  Before managing travel, he held a series of audit positions with a multi-national firms. He is a CPA and received his B.B.A. degree in accounting from Texas Technological University.