Caroline Lombardi is the Global Head of Hospitality, Travel & Leisure for Egon Zehnder, one of the largest practices in the industry, with over 60 hospitality-focused colleagues worldwide. Her work spans executive search, board search and leadership advisory. Caroline has particular expertise in CEO, Customer Experience, Commercial and Operational roles. A trusted advisor for founders, high-growth startups and Fortune 50 companies, she is known for building strong relationships with her clients and candidates. Caroline’s ability to deeply understand her clients and candidates enables her to identify the best matches for long-term success.

As a former hospitality operator, Caroline knows the challenges her clients face and brings a pragmatic approach to talent advisory. She recognizes that the right leader in the right job can transform everything: the company, the industry, the economy and, most importantly, lives.

Before joining Egon Zehnder, Caroline held executive roles with Carnival Cruise Line, Toys “R” Us, MGM Home Entertainment, Arthur Andersen and several startups. Caroline earned a BBA in marketing and finance from the University of Miami and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Gee Lefevre is a Senior Managing Director in Teneo’s Management Consulting division, where he leads Teneo’s work in Travel, Leisure, and Hospitality, as well as providing broader advisory on economics, demand, and consumer behaviour to a wide range of industries and public bodies. He is an expert on how macroeconomic, geopolitical, and cultural factors influence consumers’ behaviour, movement, and demand for products and services.

Gee’s work in the Travel sector includes extensive experience in aviation, heavy rail, bus, and broader mobility. He specialises in travel demand analysis to inform revenue recovery and growth strategy, and investment decisions. Gee has advised some of the world’s largest airline CEO’s, as part of high-profile engagements focused on recapitalisation and central government support for the aviation sector. He publishes a bi-annual global aviation forecast which is among the most detailed and robust available in the market. Outside of aviation, Gee has supported multi-billion dollar international rail franchise bids, and has led engagements involving the future of transportation, bus operations, and the impact of industrial action and disruption on rail and bus demand.

In the Hospitality and Leisure spaces, Gee supports major global chains and franchises in understanding the relationship between consumer attitudes and overall demand and revenue growth. A vast majority of this work has focused on how major events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, rapid economic flux, and structural demographic change have impacted consumers’ movement and demand for these products. Gee is an expert in the innovative use of cell tower data to map consumer movement patterns, complex economic forecasting, and scenario modelling.

Gee’s expertise have been used to support a range of broader Teneo engagements including due diligence, asset disposal, refinancing, and government intervention.

Ken Greger is a highly trusted thought leader and advisor to the Travel and Hospitality industry. As a leading Partner in the global Travel & Hospitality Practice with August Leadership LLC, an international executive search and leadership advisory firm based in New York, Ken brings worldwide experience and perspective in serving his clients, but has a down-to-earth, unassuming style. He sees each client as unique.

Ken’s impressive track record throughout the US and beyond spans over 30 years and includes high-level work with foreign governments developing their travel and tourism sectors, multinational public hotel companies, independently owned trophy properties, startups and more. He is known for his immersive approach to understanding clients' businesses, strategic objectives, and company DNA, then crafting tailored search or long-term talent strategies to achieve optimal business outcomes.

Ken's portfolio of work includes multiple assignments for C-suite and other top leaders to take the reins on substantial mixed-use projects, from the pre-planning stage through construction, and successful openings, including a $68 billion project in Saudi Arabia. His trusted advisory role extends to discussing long-term strategy, brand and culture, talent requirements, succession planning, and competitive challenges with key industry leaders. Among the numerous examples are playing a key role in upgrading leasing strategies for a global gaming and integrated resort client, as well as persuading a wealthy investor new to the hospitality industry to delay the opening of his new resort, highlighting the disadvantages of rushing the opening without proper operational and market preparation: The resort is an ongoing success today. This sort of influence with top leadership of major companies and notable investors has allowed Ken to become a trusted strategic advisor across the industry’s many sectors.

In addition to his client work, Ken is a frequent speaker and author, contributing thought pieces to esteemed industry publications such as HOTELS Magazine, Hotel News Now and also Huffington Post. He is a long-standing member of the ALIS Planning Committee and has served multiple terms on various industry boards, most recently the HSMAI Foundation, as well as The Association for Corporate Growth, and The Portland Creative Conference. He has also served multiple times as a member of the Selection Committee for Venture Northwest.

Ken started his career with Deloitte & Touche (now Deloitte). From there, he entered the world of executive search and consulting, including several years with KPMG in Los Angeles. He has worked for three global search firms and previously also achieved success with his own firm, Greger/Peterson Associates, Inc., a highly regarded retained search firm. August Leadership is a global executive search firm with an enviable track record of delivering outstanding quality and genuine diversity to solve its clients' biggest talent leadership challenges.

Manuel Bremont is a Managing Director and leads the Hospitality & Leisure Group at Ankura based out of Dallas. He brings over 20 years of experience in real estate, hospitality, tourism and other leisure products across the US, Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe. His advisory expertise is broad and includes market and feasibility analysis, strategic planning, performance improvement, interim/asset management, due diligence, restructuring, litigation support and M&A. During his career, Manuel has advised public entities, multinational development companies, financial institutions, PE firms, law firms and international lodging companies.

Manuel’s professional experience includes the interim management of an 8,000-acre, master-planned resort development and his participation as part of the team that managed the Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc. bankruptcy estate, which included approximately $5B in hospitality assets, and the real property settlement negotiations and claims evaluation process associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He has also been active in the M&A space working in different capacities across transactions involving Aimbridge Hospitality, Interstate Hotels & Resorts, Two Roads Hospitality, Belmond Hotels, Sage Hospitality, Grupo Hotelero Prisma (Mexico) and Hoteles GHL (Colombia). His contributions also extend to litigation matters including wrongful contractual termination claims, HMA disputes and company valuations, among other.

Manuel has authored articles on lodging market trends across various destinations in the Americas and has served as panel moderator and/or speaker at the Hospitality Law Conference, the ULI Hotel Development Council for North Texas, the Dallas Hotel Conference and the IMN Forum on Real Estate Opportunity & Private Fund Investing. He has also participated as guest lecturer for the Conrad N. Hilton College’s undergraduate and graduate programs in numerous occasions.

Mike Cremin is a Managing Director with Alvarez & Marsal’s Corporate Performance Improvement’s Travel, Hospitality and Leisure practice and is based in Washington D.C. His expertise is centered around empowering clients to leverage technology to enable new business capabilities and models, improve customer and employee experience, increase operating performance and reduce cost to serve.

With more than 25 years of consulting experience, he sits at the intersection of business and technology. His primary areas of concentration include growth strategy, customer experience, loyalty, digital transformation, operating model development, spend optimization, process improvement, innovation and business enablement. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.

Privately held since its founding in 1983, Alvarez and Marsal is a global professional services firm that provides advisory, business performance improvement, and turnaround management services to companies, investors, and government entities globally.

Tausif Khiani leads Capgemini’s Hospitality Industry Portfolio. He is a business and technology transformation thought leader and subject matter expert, with 15+ years working with Fortune 500 companies and leading industry players across the cruise lines, casinos, hotels, travel, and entertainment segments. Tausif has helped drive double-digit results for his clients through his work with the industry’s top innovators and disruptors, and his approach to enable connected experiences through all lenses of the business. He and Capgemini offer a unique understanding of how to build future-proofed solutions adapted for the challenges, trends, and nuances in hospitality businesses and for their consumers.

Vik Krishnan is a Senior Partner at McKinsey and Company, a global management consulting firm serving as a trusted advisor to the world's leading businesses, governments, and institutions. With over 20 years of consulting experience across multiple functional areas in travel, logistics, and infrastructure, Krishnan advises organizations on designing networks, improving pricing sophistication, driving better on-time performance, and scheduling crews efficiently.

Previously, Krishnan was a Partner and Global Aviation Sector Lead at Oliver Wyman. Krishnan holds an MBA in operations, information management, and strategic management from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an undergraduate degree in economics from Dartmouth College.