Meet the Judges
We're committed to honest and transparent judging...
The finalists and winners of The Business Travel People Awards are selected by a panel of independent and impartial judges.
They are astute and highly-respected figures representing a range of knowledge, expertise and skills from across the business travel sector.
To ensure complete impartiality, each judge is required to declare any conflicts of interest to the Judges Chair before being given access to the submissions. Each judge is then allocated specific categories and will extensively study each entry in that category.
Judges score and comment on each submission and this will be used to determine which candidates will be shortlisted.
Successful nominees are contacted in person towards the end of May before the final shortlist is announced on thebusinesstravemag.com and in The Business Travel Magazine.
The number of shortlisted candidates in each category will depend on the quality of the entries.
Judges then meet in London in early July to choose the winners.
Shortlisted candidates for the Rising Star category are also interviewed in person by the judges before a winner is chosen. This usually takes place on the judging day.
There are eight new judges on the panel this year, including Merv Moonien, Cross Border Support Manager Assistant Director at EY, and Paul Bowden, Commercial Director at RDG (Rail Delivery Group).
Following tradition, the winners of the previous year’s Rising Star Award will also help with the judging.
In 2022 there were three joint winners of this award – Sinéad Ryan, Head of Account Management UK, ALTOUR, Georgia Suttie, Venue Find Operations Manager, Agiito, and Laura Garton, Sales and Marketing Executive, Synergy Global Housing.
Carolyn Pearson, CEO of Maiden Voyage and winner of the 2022 Chair’s Award, and Lynne Griffiths, CEO Sirius Talent Solution and winner of the 2022 Shining Star Award, have also joined the judging panel.
Our Judges
Leigh Cowlishaw, Judges Chair
Joint Managing Partner of business travel consultancy Black Box Partnerships, Leigh has more than 25 years’ experience in travel, accommodation, and meetings. Cowlishaw is former Chair of the HBAA, and is Global Supplier Partnership Director for the Advantage Travel Partnership.
Ben Park
Ben is Senior Director Procurement & Travel for Parexel. A global procurement expert, Ben manages the Parexel Global T&E team and is responsible for the strategic direction and overall management of the company’s worldwide travel and expense, car fleet and commercial payment programs across 52 countries. In addition, Ben has the responsibility of coordinating and leading Parexel’s global Environmental and Sustainability efforts. Ben lives in Berlin with his family and two kids.
Bex Deadman
Bex is an Independent Consultant. Her career in travel spans 15 years, the last 8 of which were spent leading an award-winning independent TMC. Recognised as an industry disruptor for challenging traditional value propositions and commercial models of TMCs. More recently she has been leading a group of industry professionals in the development of a certification standard, to align travel suppliers with ISO31030, Travel Risk Management.
Carol Fergus
Carol is Director of Global Travel, Events and Ground Transportation for Fidelity International with over 30 years Travel experience. Carol has an MSc in Facilities Management and is CIPS qualified. Recently appointed on the GBTA Europe Advisory board, she is also Vice Chair of their Diversity Equality & Inclusion strand as well as Co-Leading the TAMS DI&E group. She has written and critiqued key topics in various travel magazines, sat on panels, steering committees and spoken at many industry events.
Carolyn Pearson
Carolyn is the founder and CEO of Maiden Voyage and is recognised as one of the world leaders in inclusive travel safety. She launched her company in 2008 after her own experiences of travelling solo during her career leading tech teams for companies such as easyJet and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. Over the years Carolyn has contributed industry-wide on the inclusive travel risk and safety agenda, having spent a number of years on the GBTA Risk Committee and is a well-known speaker and media contributor. She was the winner of the Chair’s Award at the 2022 Business Travel People Awards.
Clive Wratten
Clive was appointed to the position of Chief Executive of The BTA in 2019. Clive joined The BTA from private equity backed travel partnership company Amber Road, where he was Chief Executive Officer. Clive spent eight years as General Manager UK at Etihad Airways. Clive joined Etihad Airways from HRG as Head of International Business Group and has also held senior positions with Gulf Air, Qantas and British Airways.
Dani Ives
Dani started her career when she was 19 in the Marine travel sector with Instone International. She soon moved into supplier relations at ATPI when she was 22 before moving onto Advantage Travel Partnership and Focus Travel Partnership as Events Manager. Since joining Focus in January 2020 she has taken on other roles in the partnership including technology supplier relations, PR, Social media and continues to plan the Focus Events. She was voted Shining Star in the 2021 Business Travel People Awards.
Emma Lamb
Emma is the Global Travel Safety & Security Specialist for Milestone Tech @ Facebook, looking at all areas of travel risk best practices, training and education. She was previously the Global Travel Safety and Security Coordinator at Bank of America Merrill Lynch for seven years, helping to build and establish the Travel Safety Program.
Georgia Suttie
Georgia has 19 years’ experience working in hotels, restaurants and event offices. Since managing events in Dubai, Georgia joined Agiito in 2014 as a Conference Consultant and is currently Operations Manager for Agiito’s Venue Find department. In 2022 Georgia graduated from the Fast Forward 15 mentorship programme, joined the Generation BTA Advisory Board, raised £11k for Mind Out, won ‘Rising Star’ at the Business Travel People Awards and ‘Individual Award’ at the miaList.
Guy Snelgar
Over the last 30 years in the industry, Guy Sneglar has worked for a major airline, all three GDSs, a global hotel chain, TMC, Corporate Online Booking Tool and Payments provider, supporting corporate travel programmes ranging from £100,000 to over £500m globally. In 2019, he set up Barndello Consulting, working with TMCs, corporate customers and travel suppliers to drive their technology and commercial initiatives, from strategy through to delivery, before joining Advantage as Global Business Travel Director in June 2022.
James Foice
James is the CEO of the Association of Serviced Apartment Providers, the trade body for serviced apartments. James has 37 years’ experience in the hospitality and travel sector and has orchestrated the introduction of the International Serviced Accommodation Accreditation Process (ISAAP) which has 154 participants, in 27 countries.
Jan T. Jacobsen
With 26 years of senior-level and entrepreneurial career experience in the global hospitality and travel industries, Jan offers a wealth of expertise in sourcing, procurement, vendor management and programme development. A Corporate Travel Manager specialising in multi-national programme management in the corporate travel and meetings sector, he is currently Global Category Director Travel & Mobility Accenture.
Juliet Price
Juliet has enjoyed a successful and varied career in hospitality and events, working with hotels as well as with venue finding, events and online agencies. In 2011 she joined her husband as co-director of Polygon Consulting and has worked closely with industry association beam (formally known as HBAA) for several years as a consultant Executive Director.
Laura Garton
Laura is a dedicated and action orientated marketing professional with demonstrated success across the global business travel, relocation and hospitality industries. A passionate writer, Laura currently holds the position of Sales and Marketing Executive at Synergy Global Housing for EMEA and APAC, where she has played a pivotal role in the internationalisation of the brand. Laura graduated with a first class degree in Marketing from the University of the West of England.
Lee Whiteing
Lee worked at HSBC for 27 years, of which 15 years were spent in travel. For his last 6 years he was the Global Head of Travel Operations. In this role he oversaw the creation of a global team and policy, consolidated TMCs and saw his team achieve outstanding NPS scores across all of their stakeholders. In April 2021 Lee starts a new role as the Commercial Director for Global Secure Accreditation, a company that specialises in accrediting hotels on their safety, security and cleanliness on an unbiased and independently verified basis.
Lynne Griffiths
CEO of Sirius Talent Solutions, Lynne began her career in the travel industry as a trainee business travel consultant in 1984, progressing through senior management roles to Managing Director of a leading TMC. In 2003, Lynne founded Sirius; a specialist recruitment and headhunting firm dedicated to the business travel industry. In response to the global pandemic, Sirius introduced additional services, including outsourced HR, training, coaching and mentoring programmes, winning the company the Business Transformation Initiative of the Year in the 2021 Business Travel People Awards. Lynne was also recognised for her contribution to, and support of, the business travel industry by winning the Shining Star Award in 2022.
Merv Moonien
A travel and finance specialist with more than 20 years’ experience, managing and overseeing various corporate companies’ EMEA and global travel programmes. Merv is currently Cross Border Support Manager Assistant Director for EY and previously worked for JLL and CWT. He is an active member of ITM and has previously judged other business travel industry awards.
Nikki Rogan
Nikki is Global Travel Director at Fujitsu specialising in corporate business travel with over 20 years’ experience in the industry. She recently joined Fujitsu and is an active participant within advisory boards such as ITM Industry Affairs Group and GTMC Corporate Travel Buyers Board. Nikki was awarded ITM Multi-National Travel Manager of the year in 2017.
Paul Bowdens
Paul is Commercial Director for Rail Delivery Group (RDG) and has worked in the rail industry for 19 years across a number of organisations and in a range of senior commercial roles. Paul’s remit in his role at RDG includes teams retail, sales and distribution, key contract management, insights and analysis, fares development and key stakeholder management.
Sinead Ryan
Sinéad has 10 years’ experience in corporate travel management and has held various roles including implementations, commercial support and most recently, account management. In her current role as Head of Account Management UK for ALTOUR Sinead manages a team of account managers as well as a key global account across 11 markets. Sinéad graduated with a First-Class Honours degree in Tourism Management in 2013 and has just completed a Diploma from the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply.
