travel-technology
(18)
Jeff Zotara Built a Career Around One Useful Question: What Do People Actually Want?
Before travel loyalty, Jeff Zotara helped assemble green schools and marketed a GPS tracker for pets. The industries changed; his method did not: listen closely, build flexibly, and make technology answer to real life.
Diane Pierson Wants Innovation to Survive Contact With the Market
After decades turning market knowledge into products and more than $100 million in reported revenue, the author of How to Innovate on Purpose has brought her clear-eyed method to travel technology.
Erika White Has a Soft Spot for Messy Problems
The Navan CMO built a career by translating complicated products into human stories. Her favorite raw material is the sort of friction most people would rather hide - including a purse full of crumpled receipts.
Martin Retai Put the Tour Guide in Your Pocket - Then Told the Screen to Get Out of the Way
A gondolier’s stories in Venice gave a Hungarian engineer a product idea: let the phone know where you are, let a local voice explain why it matters, and leave your eyes free for the city.
Kishore Pallamreddy Spent 18 Years Making Travel Software Behave. Now He Wants AI to Earn Its Boarding Pass.
The Zapcom founder built his career inside the invisible machinery of travel. His next wager is that enterprise AI needs the same discipline: product judgment, durable architecture, and an unforgiving eye for the customer.
David Shull Missed a Ferry. Then He Found Travel’s Invisible Work.
A six-hour wait in a Greek parking lot sent an early Handshake employee looking for the software behind travel advice. He found a profession buried in tabs, copy-paste and admin - then started building its operating system.
Joe Salemme Built a Travel Business Around the Miles Nobody Wanted
Before LUXY Ride, Joe Salemme learned to notice trucks returning empty. He turned that stubborn operating waste into a second career spanning chauffeur software, corporate travel, and Connecticut development.
Nick Poggi Built a Travel Company Around the People Who Make a Trip Worth Taking
The TrovaTrip co-founder turned a messy group vacation into a three-sided marketplace. His enduring bet is simple: useful travel technology should make human connection easier, not try to replace it.
Tim Choate Keeps Building the Rails Behind the Room
Before vacation rentals became a software arms race, Tim Choate saw the mess behind the booking button. His three-decade career is a study in making fragmented markets feel simple.
Paula Port Is Teaching the Internet to See Toronto at 100%
After more than two decades telling one city's story, Destination Toronto's chief marketing officer is preparing for a world in which travellers ask machines where to go - while insisting that curiosity, community and human judgment still lead the way.
Jennifer Catto Is Teaching Travel Technology to Make a Clearer Promise
She once planned to work in public policy. Instead, Jennifer Catto found her lever for change inside companies in transition - and built a career turning complicated technology into promises customers can understand.
Alvaro Silberstein Is Turning Accessibility Into Travel Infrastructure
A Patagonia expedition revealed a market hiding in plain sight. Alvaro Silberstein built Wheel the World to turn scattered accessibility details into reliable travel infrastructure.
Jochen Koedijk Is Teaching Travel Marketing to Speak Machine
The Expedia Group CMO started with web design and paid search. Now he is preparing brands for a world where travelers may ask an AI agent to choose for them.
Heather Balsley
From a teenage farmers-market job to the executive committee at IHG, Heather Balsley built a career by learning how small customer moments connect to a global commercial system.
Aaron Fessler
He built booking software for the tours-and-attractions world by first living inside it - running a 100-acre racetrack in the Nevada desert. Now Aaron Fessler wants to hand every operator the tools he wished he'd had.
David Krauter
David Krauter is the CEO of Going, the flight-deal company that has saved members more than $1 billion since 2015. A Cornell-trained operator, he spent over a decade at Tripadvisor where he ran SmarterTravel - the portfolio behind Cruise Critic, Jetsetter and AirfareWatchdog - and tripled its revenue. He went on to lead the art-and-collectibles marketplace Invaluable as COO then CEO, ran the social-events company Yaymaker, and built consumer growth engines at Jobcase. Through his firm Shalestone Capital he advises and invests in technology companies. In March 2026 he stepped in to pilot Going's next chapter of growth.
Michael Greene
Michael Greene is the CEO and President of Skylark, a New York based luxury travel agency that blends human travel advisors with high-tech booking tools. A Cornell Hotel School graduate, he spent a decade building hospitality marketplaces - leading the Amex Global Dining Network and global growth at Resy, co-founding the members-only restaurant platform Dorsia, and serving as Chief of Staff at Avero. He now leads Skylark and its members-only last-minute luxury hotel platform, Wanderluxe.
Sachin Narode
Sachin Narode is the co-founder and CEO of Xeni, a New York-based Web 3.0 operating system for travel that lets anyone launch a white-label booking platform with wholesale inventory, instant blockchain settlement, and no-code tools. A self-described serial entrepreneur with a background in medicine, molecular biology and finance, he has built and sold companies across biotech and wearables, advised technology and data teams at Morgan Stanley, and once became known as 'the Mango Man' for introducing a mango market to the United States. He preaches a single gospel: execution over ideas.