Management  Team

Andrew Menkes, CEO/Chairman

Andrew has a 25-year history in the travel industry, with a varied background in Airline, Travel Agency and Corporate Travel Management.

Andrew Menkes started his career with TWA and during a 9-year period he worked in various departments in Passenger Reservations.  Menkes' management experience at TWA was as Regional Manager of Interline Sales, and later as the first Regional Manager of Automation Marketing.

Andrew's travel agency background started as founder and CEO of Priority Travel, Inc. a New York based agency with international offices in London and Hong Kong.  Menkes also served in various regional and executive positions with a number of travel agencies.  Mr. Menkes joined Republic New York Corporation in January of 1997 as their first Vice President of Global Travel Management.  One year after Republic merged with HSBC, Andrew formed PTC.

Mr. Menkes has served as Vice President of Finance and Vice President of Administration for ACTE (The Association of Corporate Travel Executives) and as a member of their Executive Committee.  He has also served on the Technology Committee of the Corporate Travel Association of New York, as well as the Board of Directors of the National Business Travel Association (NBTA).  Andrew was also a member of the Board of Trustees of IBTM. 

Mr. Menkes has received recognition as the first Travel Manager to be accredited by ARC as a Corporate Travel Department (CTD).  He also pioneered the first corporate-direct (internet-based) Electronic Ticket purchase with British Airways.  Andrew initiated a similar web-based program with JetBlue Airways in the U.S.

In 1998 he was named one of the Top 25 Most Influential Travel Executives.  In 1999, Business Travel News named Andrew Menkes Travel Manager of the Year.  Andrew was once again recognized as one of the Top 25 Most Influential Travel Executives, this time for the year 2000.

From 2006 through April of 2008, Mr. Menkes was Senior Vice President of Sales-Americas for Eos Airlines.

Evan Newman, Chief Technology Officer

Evan Newman was most recently the COO for Portaga. He brings with him more than 20 years of extensive travel industry experience. In his current role his responsibilities include Product, Operations and Integration Partnerships/Sales. Evan began his career in 1984 at Macpherson Travel as Travel Operations Manger for Columbia University before moving on to the Goldman Sachs & Co. in-house travel department as the Vice President of Travel Operations and Technology. During his 13 year tenure, he was responsible for overseeing the transition from in-house travel to an outsourced mid-west facility and back again, running the largest call center in New York City and rolling out Sabre-BTS.

In 2000, Evan invented PeopleTracker, the travel industry’s first Web-based, real-time crisis management tool to assist global clients with security concerns. Later that year, he was recruited by WorldTravel BTI to the position of Senior Vice President of Technology. Here he was the driving force behind the unbundling of GDS contracts, which allowed the agency to buy and repair their own equipment, and thereby save millions of dollars annually. Prior to joining Portaga, Evan served as the CTO of Ovation Travel Group where he oversaw the technical implementation of various accounts, planned for their infrastructure overhaul and equipped them with a new state-the-art Automatic Call Distributor.

In addition to his role with Portaga, today Evan is also Owner/President of Survey-Sez.com, a web-based surveys, data collection and reporting company.

John Asselta, Senior Vice President

John Asselta joined Partnership Travel Consulting after a 21 year career at KPMG where he served as the Director of Meeting and Travel Services.  While at KPMG, John grew a meeting department of 4 which did logistical planning for 500 meetings a year to a department of 40.  In addition to meeting management, the department also handled sourcing, registration, a small meetings desk, coordination of on line meetings and billing for over 2000 meetings annually.  John co-led a team that centralized meetings for KPMG, placing area meeting teams around the country.  In 1994, John orchestrated an agreement and then designed a $3.4M, 250 seat amphitheater at a local hotel at no cost to KPMG.  In addition, John created, designed and managed KPMG conference centers in New York, Chicago and Montvale, NJ.

In 1991, John was asked to create a national travel program for KPMG which was at that time using over 250 different travel agencies.  John, along with the firm’s treasurer, coordinated agency and card selection, created strategy and travel policy for KPMG North America.  As Director, John co-led a team that created processes that successfully managed over $350M in travel related spend.  John was also responsible for international buy in and the creation of KPMG’s Global Hotel Program.  Often benchmarked as having the best in class air, hotel and car agreements, and the travel program was nationally respected for successful delivery of requested volume and market share and for creating true win/win agreements.

As the Director of the Meeting and Travel Services Department, John created leadership programs that developed leadership skills and competencies, led department retreats and created a mission statement that guided the department to receive meeting and travel client satisfaction ratings over ‘4’ (1-5 scale).

Over the last 21 years, John has served on various hotel, air and car rental advisory boards, spoken at various vendor national sales meetings and presented at ACTE and NBTA conferences.  A graduate of Siena College, John is an active member of ACTE, NBTA and MPI.

Lauren Ewing, Senior Vice President Meetings Strategies

Lauren has twenty four years of hotel sales & marketing, corporate travel agency management, meetings management, and travel and meetings technology integration in her business portfolio.  Lauren started her 15 year career in hotels working in senior sales roles with companies such as Sheraton, Interstate, Hilton International, and Potomac Hotel Group.

Her sales and marketing success segued into corporate travel – both sales and operations – working as a VP with ITI, a leading regional TMC, and then as a Director with Rosenbluth International, one of the Top 4 global travel management companies.  The progressive and forward-thinking nature of these businesses provided an operational foundation in a broad spectrum of corporate travel and meetings web based technologies.

Lauren’s meeting planning career has encompassed being a VP with Gray Consulting Inc., one of the US’s top 25 meeting planning companies, Director of Meetings for Expedia Corporate Travel, and Managing Partner of Meeting Intelligence.  Her 360 degrees of experience with travel and meetings, accompanied by a Six Sigma Champion’s approach, brings a fresh, consultative result to every client interaction.

Huub Smeets, President: Simacon

 
Huub Smeets has an extensive experience (25 years) and track record of success in directing, managing and overseeing corporate travel, non product related procurement and facilities functions.

He started his career at the company owned travel management company of Philips, at that time one of the largest in-house travel agencies (150 fte) with an IATA license. He was part of the Management Team which outsourced the travel office, which was one of the first agencies

to be outsourced in Europe.

Huub continued his career and worked for multiple Fortune 500 companies such as
Philips Electronics, IBM, Rockwell Automation and BMC Software. While he has always been involved in European and Global corporate business travel management, his career and experience expanded also towards non product related procurement and facilities.
 

Huub Smeets founded Simacon at the beginning of 2009. His company delivers Interim Management, Consultancy and Recruitment Services and specializes on corporate Business Travel Management (including MICE), NPR-procurement and Facilities.

Huub is a longstanding and active member of ACTE and NEVI, the Dutch association for purchasers. He is among the co-founder of CORTAS, the Dutch based Corporate Travel Association, of which the top 20 Dutch multinationals are members.

He also served on the Board of ACTE as Vice President Global Development, their Executive Committee and various planning committees. Furthermore he is a guest lecturer at the Hanze University Groningen (The Netherlands).

E Pluribus Unum - Integrating Payment Systems Globally

Strategic Meetings Management - The Meeting Professional Magazine

Global Travel Trends - Presentation at the Philadelphia Business Travel Association

CTD White Paper - Corporate Travel Department White Paper written for NBTA

Shifitng the Air Paradigm - An article that appeared in Procurement Magazine

Direct  Bookings on British Airways - An article that appeared in Information Week

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