Bonnie Reitz, chairman of the board of directors, Airlines Reporting Corp.: Beginning as a ticket agent, Bonnie’s career journey spans executive roles at Eastern Airlines, System One Global Distribution, Continental Airlines, public and private board service, and her own company, Inside-Out Culture to Customer.

Bonnie joined Gordon Bethune’s executive team at Continental Airlines in 1994 as they led a miraculous turnaround taking the airline from “Worst to First.” She was the architect of a customer-centric business strategy that included the introduction of e-ticket kiosks, “red carpet” (actually blue) priority boarding, an award-winning One Pass frequent-flyer program and the Work Hard Fly Right campaign that focused all employees on customers. These achievements led to multiple JD Power Customer Satisfaction awards and Continental being listed on the 100 Best Places to Work – all while delivering record-breaking profitability. She has widely shared her airline distribution expertise through a master’s class curriculum at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, and lectures at Duke, Harvard, Princeton and USF.

On behalf of Boeing, Bonnie developed a “go-to-market” curriculum for Chinese airlines, as they prepared for Open Skies, and she’s been a featured speaker at the Fortune 1000 Company’s internal and customer conferences. As the chairman of ARC, her governance leadership transformed the Board overseeing ARC from one of individual airline agendas to a collaborative Board focused on ensuring ARC delivers innovative services benefiting the industry and all its customers.

Stewart Bainum Sr., founder and CEO, Choice Hotels International: In 1957, when Stewart Bainum Sr. opened his first 26-room hotel in Silver Spring, Maryland, he couldn’t afford to install a swimming pool, which prevented him from being able to join the new seven-member Quality Courts United cooperative system of hotels. After spending a year of lobbying members of the association to let him join, he not only became a member, he became chairman of the executive committee of the board and persuaded them to become a for-profit entity. Based in Daytona Beach, Fla., the organization launched a $4 million initial public offering, becoming Quality Courts Motels. Stewart, who had four hotels by the end of 1967 operating under the name Park Consolidated, proposed merging his assets with Quality Courts Motels. Following a proxy fight that he won, Stewart became president and CEO and moved the company to Silver Spring. In 1972, Quality Courts Motels changed its name to Quality Inns International, as it had expanded into Belgium, Canada, Germany, Mexico and New Zealand.

In 1980, Quality Inns International merged with Manor Care nursing home company, a company Stewart started with his brother in 1960 through which they opened more than 200 retirement facilities. Working with his father, Stewart Bainum Jr. in 1981 created and launched the midscale Comfort Inn brand. In 1987, when Stewart Bainum Jr. took over from his father as chairman and CEO of Manor Care, Quality Inns had 290 hotels under one brand.

Over the past 32 years, that foundational brand grew to become Choice, the multibrand global franchisor with some 7,000 hotels in more than 40 countries and territories.

Ed Adams, CEO of Direct Travel: Ed Adams began his travel industry career in 1979. Just four years later, in 1983, he founded Professional Travel Corporation. Under his leadership, Professional Travel grew its office presence nationwide and became the Rocky Mountain region’s largest regional corporate travel management company.

After identifying the corporate travel market’s consolidation needs, Ed utilized Professional Travel to create Navigant International in 1998. A publicly traded company, Navigant grew through approximately 60 acquisitions and totaled $4 billion in sales when CWT purchased it in 2006. Ed’s desire to recreate Navigant’s roll-up concept led him to engineer the investments of a private equity firm to create Direct Travel in 2011. With 52 acquisitions to date, Direct Travel seeks investment opportunities for complementary corporate travel add-ons.

Ed has navigated through multiple industry changes, including the introduction of a no-commission landscape, expansion of online agencies and Covid-19. His business strategy is simple: to surround yourself with strong people, engage self-starters and remain focused on servicing clients. Ed received a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Business Administration from the University of Colorado. Among a variety of awards and distinctions, Business Travel News named Ed one of the Top 25 Most Influential Business Travel Executives in 2011 and 2014. Ernst & Young also named him the regional winner of its Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1991 and 2015.

Eric Bailey, director of employee travel and devices, Microsoft: Eric Bailey oversees Employee Hardware, MSTravel, VenueSource and Payment teams for 180,000 employees in over 100 countries. He has spent more than 18 years at Microsoft and is responsible for developing and implementing Microsoft technology solutions to move employees across the globe while maximizing productivity.

Under Eric’s leadership, the MSTravel team was among the first to implement ConTgo, Tripism, Roadmap, Lumo, and many other startup technology platforms. In 2018, and again in 2022, he pulled together industry leaders to publish the Travel Manifesto and later the Purposeful Travel Platform with the goal of aligning suppliers and buyers to provide forward direction and insight for the industry.

In 2023, with the help of his excellent team and network of suppliers, Microsoft launched Cytric Easy in the U.S. to leverage Teams collaboration technology into the booking process. Eric graduated from the University of Puget Sound with majors in Economics and Asian Studies and continued his education at University of Washington Michael G. Foster School of Business, where he received his MBA. Business Travel News named Eric Travel Manager of the Year in 2015 and named him as one of the 25 Most Influential Business Travel Executives in 2015 and 2018.