(22nd FEBRUARY – LONDON) FESTIVE ROAD, the global consultancy on a mission to #CREATEBETTER travel & meetings management, today announced the creation of a leadership team to expand support for its growing team of Roaders around the world. The team will serve as a foundation for expected future business growth across buyer and supplier consulting, managed services, product development and analytics. FESTIVE ROAD’s team has doubled over the past year in response to strong demand from travel and meetings buyers and suppliers alike.
Joining founders Paul Tilstone and Caroline Strachan in the new leadership team are:
- Lora Ellis, who leads Buyer Consulting for Travel. Lora leads the team of Roaders who help buyers use travel to enable their organisations to accomplish their broader goals building strategy, sourcing and ongoing services to drive programme performance.
- Meredith Smith, who leads Buyer Consulting for Meetings & Events. Meredith leads the Roaders in this growing area of FESTIVE ROAD, as organisations increasingly look to deliver even more business value from their meetings and manage this category and service in a more sophisticated way.
- Louise Kilgannon, who is responsible for Managed Services. This rapidly expanding group of outsourced travel management Roaders places our expertise and drive right inside client teams, to help elevate travel programmes.
- Mike Orchard, who leads Product Development and the newly created Analytics Centre of Excellence. Mike’s team plays an instrumental role in helping FESTIVE ROAD continue to anticipate and meet the evolving needs of the industry through its offerings. They also lead the benchmarking and insights used to drive action across our client programmes.
- Katie Virtue, will move to lead Supplier Consulting. In this role, Katie leads the team of Roaders who help suppliers create deeper client and market engagement through practice areas such as Client Advisory Boards, event delivery and thought leadership.
The creation of this leadership team will enable FESTIVE ROAD to advance the organisation’s mission and focus on strategic growth opportunities for the next era of the company.
“The creation of this leadership team is the next natural step in our evolution as a company, given each of these leaders has contributed to FESTIVE ROAD’s growth and success for some time,” shared Caroline Strachan. “I couldn’t think of a better group of industry experts to lead our company, develop client relationships and mentor our Roaders.”
Paul Tilstone added, “FESTIVE ROAD has a bold, unique mission to truly create better travel and meetings management and it’s going to take all of us to make lasting change in this industry. We’re looking forward to advancing our mission in new and exciting ways.”
