Future Travel Experience Team and Advisory Boards

Chris Annetts - Chief Strategy Officer, Heathrow Airport

Chris is an Executive Director with extensive experience in the airlines/aviation and retail/hospitality industries. Skilled in Stakeholder Management, Economic Regulation, Negotiation, Strategy and Planning, Commercial Revenue Development, Customer Service and Digital. Chris has worked for airports across London for close to 20 years now and was recently promoted to Chief Strategy Officer at Heathrow Airport as the Executive Committee lead for Strategy, Regulation and Economics, Forecasting, Masterplanning and Customer Insight.

Christina Cassotis - CEO, Pittsburgh International Airport

As CEO of the Allegheny County Airport Authority, Christina Cassotis has led a dramatic turnaround at Pittsburgh International Airport – a near doubling of nonstop destinations served, four years of record passenger traffic growth, and a recently announced billion dollar Terminal Modernization Program. During her tenure, Pittsburgh International was named Air Transport World’s 2017 Airport of the Year and Regional Airport of the Year by the CAPA Centre for Aviation.Ms. Cassotis also received the 2017 Excellence in Visionary Leadership Award from Airports Council International – North America, and was named the 2017 Director of the Year for medium-size airports by Airport Revenue News. A frequent speaker at national and international aviation events, Ms. Cassotis holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a BA from the University of Massachusetts.

Dimitris Bountolos - Chief Information and Innovation Officer (CIIO), Ferrovial

Dimitris Bountolos is the Chief Information and Innovation Officer (CIIO) for Ferrovial. He was previously Chief Digital Officer at Latam airlines. He replaces Federico Flórez, who is leaving the company after 12 years in this position, in line with the succession plans. Dimitris will take office in early July.

Bountolos has spent his career in business and entrepreneurship, with a proven track record in aeronautics and consulting. Dimitris Bountolos (Granada, 1978) spent much of his career in Iberia, where he was Director of Madrid-Barajas airport, Transformation and Hub Development Director, and Vice-President of Customer Experience.

As an entrepreneur, he has been a founder and partner of such startups as Zero 2 Infinity (Europe’s first investor-owned aerospace transport company), Guudjob (Employee Experience); BlueSouth (Drones); and IllusionBox (VR and immersive environments). He was also formerly a senior advisor to the Chief Innovation Officer at NASA in Houston; and senior advisor to McKinsey on digital processing for the travel, transportation and logistics industry. He holds a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Granada and post-graduate qualifications from Stanford, ESADE and IESE Business Schools. He is fluent in Spanish, English and Greek.

Dr. Bjoern Becker - Head of Future Intercontinental Experience Program, Lufthansa Group Airlines

Bjoern has over 20 years of experience within Product Management, Passenger Experience, Cargo Operations, Production Planning & Control and IT, holds a PhD in Revenue Management and has published articles on Revenue Management, Production Control and Service Management.

He is responsible for the introduction of the new intercontinental fleet experience of Lufthansa and Swiss as well as the customer related topics of the Lufthansa Group ReStart program during the Covid19-crisis.

Bjoern represents Lufthansa Group within the Star Alliance Customer Experience Strategy committee and is member or the advisory board of FraCareS GmbH.

Kevin Kleist - Senior Emerging Trends Advisor, Southwest Airlines

Kevin is helping to drive change within Southwest by exposing the company to new and emerging technologies that will help solve for the unique challenges that face the airline today and in the future. He builds meaningful relationships for collaboration with innovation-driven companies and startups to study, design, develop, and test emerging technologies in real-world environments. Through those collaborations, Kevin gathers key insights and learnings that are used to better understand a solutions viability, its risks, and how the solution would integrate with the company’s existing technology and infrastructure.

Already a Captain of the FTE Baggage Innovation Work Group, Kevin will now work to support the development of the entire FTE portfolio with us.

Joe Chiu - Vice President, Digital & Data Management Systems, Changi Airport Group

Joe Chiu currently holds the position of Vice President, Digital & Commercial Systems at Changi Airport Group (CAG) Singapore. Changi Airport is the world's sixth busiest airport in terms of international traffic and it has been voted by air travellers as the World’s Best Airport for the fifth consecutive year. At CAG, Joe works closely with key stakeholders to strategise, drive and implement IT initiatives that are aligned with the company’s Digital Master Plan for the next three years. He oversees two of the main corporate IT deliverables, namely the “Connecting to Customers” and “Innovation with Information” thrusts, which help to deliver personalised and user-centric services for customers through smart use of digital services and data analytics.

Robert Carey - President, Wizz Air

Robert is an American and French citizen who has a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Arizona State University as well as a Master in Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School. Robert started his career in aviation twenty years ago with America West Airlines, followed by Delta Air Lines. After Delta, Robert spent over a decade at McKinsey and Company, where he was a Partner in the airline practice. He then joined easyJet 2017, where he was most recently the Chief Commercial and Customer Officer.

Samuel Ingalls - Principal, Barich, Inc

Samuel G. Ingalls is a Principal for Barich, Inc. with over 30 years of experience in the aviation industry. Samuel recently retired as the Assistant Director of Aviation, Information Systems for Las Vegas McCarran International Airport (LAS), serving the Clark County Department of Aviation (Department) for more than 30 years. He started his career as the Department’s Business Office Manager after earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Aviation Business Administration from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, where he continues to serve on the University Business Industry Advisory Board. He is certified as an International Airport Professional (I.A.P.) by the International Civil Aviation Organization and Airports Council International (ACI), along with his certification by the American Association of Airport Executives as an Accredited Airport Executive (A.A.E.). Samuel is a frequent user of the aviation system with a commercial multi-engine pilot’s rating.

Satyaki Raghunath - Chief Strategy and Development Officer, Bengaluru International Airport

Satyaki is the Chief Strategy & Development Officer at BIAL. He comes to BIAL with almost two decades of experience in working with public and private sector investors and operators of transport infrastructure advising on business, finance, strategy, regulatory and project delivery related initiatives. He has extensive experience in transportation and airport system planning across major cities viz. London, Chicago, Dubai, Houston, New Delhi etc. In his role at BIAL, Satyaki is responsible for the Strategy and Development BU focusing on front-end corporate strategy, traffic forecasting and market analyses, master planning and the BIAL Centre of Excellence (CoE) comprising our Innovation Lab, Business Intelligence and Capacity and Operational Planning. Prior to joining BIAL, Satyaki was with GMR Airports Ltd as Chief Innovation Officer for the airport sector across the group. Before this he held leadership roles at London Stansted Airport, Dubai Airports, where he was Head of Master Planning and at LeighFisher, a specialist global airport advisory firm.

Vivian Lo - GM Customer Experience and Design, Cathay Pacific Airways

Vivian Lo has a diverse aviation management background with key managerial positions in Cathay Pacific’s headquarters in Customer, Airports, Cargo, Revenue Management, Marketing, International Affairs and Airline Planning, and Regional and Country management roles in Taiwan, Korea, China, Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam. Vivian is currently in charge of Customer Experience & Design, a new department recently set up in Cathay Pacific to oversee the end-to-end customer journey on ground, in the air, and through digital channels. Vivian lives and breathes the raison d’etre for the airline – to enable a Life Well Travelled for its customers – by leading an insights-driven and customer centric design process to optimise the Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon travel experience. Vivian is an avid advocator of Design Thinking and undertakes to apply a human-centred approach to innovation in service and products, and dedicates her time to teaching and promoting this discipline.