Olivia Klipa serves as Vice President, Conferences and Events at the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
In this role, she oversees the overall planning, management, enhancement, and execution of all AHLA and AHLA Foundation programs, meetings, and special events. She also assists with overall events strategy and future growth initiatives. Olivia serves as a key leader within the association, working cross-departmentally and reporting to both internal and external stakeholders.
David Teklit is CEO of Teklogix, LLC, a technology consulting and cloud solutions provider company. Teklogix primarily serves the hospitality, telecommunications, and service provider sectors. David is a seasoned professional with a career that spans over 25 years in technology and entrepreneurial endeavors. Prior to founding Teklogix in 2013, David worked for the Jumeirah Group where he was Vice President of Information Technology responsible for global Infrastructure and operations along with a new developments portfolio.
Robert ("Rob") Grimes is the Founder & CEO of the IFBTA (the Food and Beverage Technology Association) and is the Host of the Accelerate podcast on the Foodable Network.
The IFBTA was launched at FSTEC (Foodservice Technology Conference and Showcase) 2014 which was founded by Rob in 1996 and is a non-profit professional association promoting and advancing technology and innovation for the global food and beverage industries.
Dr. Kelly McGuire is Managing Principal, Hospitality, ZS Associates, where she is responsible for helping global hospitality clients improve their commercial strategy and operations, and to find impactful uses for data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning to support their commercial strategy.
Douglas began his career in the hospitality industry in London with Gleneagles Hotels, followed by employment with Regent International in Australia and Shangri La in China. He was General Manager of the Pan Pacific Bangkok where he was recognized for his community work by UNICEF and played an active role in the Thai Hotels Association.
Having established FutureLog's Sydney-based entity in 2021, Benjamin is responsible for leading and supporting the portfolio growth of customers using FutureLog's procure-to-pay software across the Asia Pacific region with a key focus on Global and Regional Strategic Partners.
Sandy is the Senior Director of Technology & Information at the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) with her focus primarily on AHLA/HTNG Technical Workgroups. Sandy has extensive experience in the hotel industry working for Hospitality Technology Next Generation (HTNG) which is now part of AHLA, the OpenTravel Alliance, and working for Marriott International for over 20 years holding positions within operations, reservations sales and information technology.
Joshua is the Director of Traveltech for Scotland, a business cluster organisation getting behind Scotland's Traveltech pioneers. He is also the Director of Tourism - Tech at the University of Edinburgh's FuturesInstitute where he leads on the application of data-driven innovation for the tourism and festival sectors. He previously worked at The Data Lab where he led programmers to improve data science skills across Scotland. He joined from Nesta where he established the £10m Longitude Prize, that featured on BBC Horizon's 50th Anniversary Episode.