IHG Hotels has named Julienne Smith as chief development officer, Americas, replacing Joel Eisemann, who will be retiring in June. Smith has been serving as senior vice president, development - luxury and upscale. She has 20 years of development experience, having joined IHG in August 2019 from Hyatt Hotels Corporation. She started her career at Marriott International.
JetBlue has named John Swift as vice president, technology. He comes to the airline with more than 25 years of experience in software engineering and product architecture. Most recently, he served as vice president of engineering at the streaming service Discovery+, where he oversaw a global multicloud platform organization responsible for digital content delivery. Previously, he had led engineering and product teams for Netflix, Capital One and other companies.
TripActions has named Maria Chevalier as senior director of connectivity partnerships, leading the travel management company’s relationships with airlines, hotels, ground transportation providers and other suppliers that provide content to the platform. Chevalier brings more than 30 years of business travel industry experience to TripActions, serving most recently as executive vice president of customer success at PredictX. She also has had executive roles with Hilton, Travelport and BCD Travel.
CWT has named Richard Saunders as vice president, Global Partners Network (GPN). He was previously co-lead of the team, having previously also managed GPN’s commercial operations. Prior to joining CWT in 2007, Saunders spent six years with United Airlines, managing sales and alliance activities in the Middle East and Africa.
