Speakers

Mike Dominguez is actively involved in leadership roles in the Meetings and Events Industry including the executive committees for US Travel Association and Meetings Mean Business Coalition. He speaks in the industry often on topics of disruption, the state of the industry, the economy, behavioral lessons. Mike is a past recipient of HSMAI’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales.

Karen Laos is a leadership coach equipping women to stand out with confidence. She champions female business leaders to own their value and find their voice so they can be seen and heard. She also works with teams to create cultures of trust and function at their best.

She has coached leaders at Facebook, Google, Netflix, Yahoo!, Sony, Microsoft, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, Trip Advisor, Bacardi, Levi, and more. Karen was HR Director for Gensler Architecture, trained teams at Gap Inc, Wells Fargo, and taught Organizational Development at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.

She was the Senior Advisor to Program Delivery for Decker Communications, where she managed and mentored a team of facilitators delivering programs around the world. Karen coached executives on how to influence and speak more effectively. Her passion lies in developing others and she has done this throughout her career of nearly three decades.

Suzanne Neufang serves as the Chief Executive Officer for the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), the world’s premier business travel and meetings trade organization headquartered in the Washington, D.C. area with operations on six continents. In her role, she oversees the association’s strategy, staff, services, and mission to provide value in the form of community, learning and advocacy to industry members and partners worldwide. Joining GBTA in February 2021, she has served at the helm as the $1.4 trillion global business travel industry navigates recovery, in addition to leading the association’s ongoing evolution.

She is a transformation-focused executive who has successfully led teams and product/service innovation through times of great challenges and change – “connecting dots” in technology, marketing, talent, and customer needs to exceed sales, revenue, customer adoption/retention, and employee engagement goals. In her previous role as HRS’s Senior Vice President-Americas and Managing Director-North America, she launched the company into the U.S. B2B market with Platform-as-a-Service set of hotel solutions for corporations and hotels. She has also held previous leadership and executive roles at Sabre Holdings/ GetThere/ Travelocity, Intuit, and Verizon.

Visit www.gbta.org to find out how GBTA delivers world-class education, events, research, advocacy, and media to a growing global network of more than 28,000 travel buyers, suppliers and professionals and 125,000 active contacts.

Aran Ryan is Director of Industry Studies at Tourism Economics where he helps owners, operators, and destinations understand the impact of tourism industry trends. He focuses on industry-specific analysis and forecasting, as well as strategy and policy analysis.

Aran has over 25 years of consulting experience applying analytics, forecasting, project management, research, and financial analysis skills to support client decision-making. Prior to joining Tourism Economics, he was a Director in the Hospitality & Leisure consulting practice at PwC.

Steven Van Belleghem is a customer experience enthusiast! His mission is to inspire companies to become more customer centric.

Steven believes in combining common sense, new technologies, an empathic human touch, playing the long game and taking social responsibility to win the hearts and business of customers over and over again.

To achieve his mission, he has written 5 international bestsellers (>150,000 copies sold); he shares new ideas on his social channels (including his YouTube channel with more than 7 million views); he delivers keynote presentations all over the world (>1,500 keynotes in >45 countries) and his ideas are often shared by media outlets such as Forbes, The Guardian, and more.