Our Independent Advisory Group (IAG) is made up of world-leading travel and sustainability experts. The advisory group helps ensure that initiatives put forward by Travalyst are credible, scalable and impactful.
Pat is an executive mentor to leaders in transition and an adviser to many organisations navigating the intersection of purpose and sustainability leadership. She is the Founder of The Purpose Business (TPB), Asia’s leading advisory network who guide leaders to evolve business as a force for good. Over the last 10 years, TPB has helped organisational leaders from blue chip conglomerates to start-ups
and non-profits embed purpose and sustainability into their strategy and operations. Her earlier career started in environmental and community-based charities. Pat then held pioneering Chief Sustainability Officer roles in the region including Ayala Land, the Philippines’ most esteemed land developer who pioneered LEED certified mixed-use facilities in the country. In 2008 she was named Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts’ first Global Head of CSR & Sustainability which drove the company to become the first Asian hotel chain to be recognised in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, drove green design standards and sustainable sourcing initiatives as well as community-based conservation efforts from coral restoration in Fiji, Maldives and Cebu as well as the panda rehabilitation centres in Chengdu and turtle hatcheries in Muscat and Penang. Pat was the force behind the shark’s fin ban from service in in 2012, working alongside other hotel chains, airlines and tourism boards to drive industry change in sustainable food sourcing.
Pat is a Senior Associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and sits on the Global Steering Committee of the Prince of Wales’s Business & Sustainability Programme. She serves as faculty and tutor across various Executive Education programmes as well as online courses such as High Impact leadership and Governance for a Sustainable Future. She sits on the Sanofi Shared Care Collective, an advisory board for the leading consumer healthcare group now known as Opella as well as Ignite Impact PH, an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in Filipino grassroots solutions to social and environmental challenges. Pat is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and remains a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She holds an MA in Globalisation & Governance, certificates
in Transformational Leadership from the University of Oxford and Global Leadership & Public Policy for the 21st Century from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Susanne Becken is a Professor of Sustainable Tourism at Griffith University in Australia where she focuses on research related to the science-policy-practice interface of transforming tourism. Susanne is globally recognised for her work on sustainable tourism with over 150 peer-reviewed outputs and 25 years of experience in managing multi-disciplinary projects, including for the United Nations, OECD, Asian Development Bank and South Pacific Tourism Organisation. Susanne demonstrated research leadership with impact by developing the first carbon calculator specifically for tourism, building a Global Sustainable Tourism Dashboard, and preparing policy advice for Tourism Ministries globally on integrating climate change into tourism policymaking. She has held influential roles in public and private sectors, working with leading organisations such as Amadeus, WTTC, PATA, Air New Zealand, EarthCheck, the Whitsundays Climate Innovation Hub, and Te Araroa Trail. She is an elected Fellow of the International Academy of the Study of Tourism and one of only 16 recipients of the prestigious UNWTO Ulysses Award for her contribution to tourism knowledge.
Sara Dolnicar develops and experimentally tests theory-informed practical measures that trigger pro-environmental tourist behaviour; her research is driven by curiosity and the desire to create meaningful change. Professor Dolnicar has published more than 300 papers and won more than 30 awards for her work, including a prestigious Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship and the Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA) Distinguished Researcher Award. She has been named a Slovenian Ambassador of Science, the highest honour the Republic of Slovenia bestows on expatriate Slovenian researchers in recognition of global excellence, impact, and knowledge transfer. Professor Dolnicar is currently the Co-Editor in Chief of Annals of Tourism Research, one of the leading international scientific journals in the field of tourism.
Xavier Font has over 25 years’ experience working in sustainable tourism in the research and academic world with emphasis on business environment and impacts, entrepreneurship in the tourism industry, sustainable tourism/operations management, sustainability marketing, CSR and sustainable supply chain management. Xavier has worked with numerous organisations to promote pro-sustainable behaviour and enhance ways to market and communicate sustainability including the UNWTO, European Commission, UNEP, UNWTO, UNCTAD, UNDP, and many tourist boards. In 2022, he acted as consultant for the European Commission DG Grow on the stakeholder consultation for the Tourism Transition Pathway. Earlier in his career, he wrote the feasibility study for the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC).
Paul Peeters is a Visiting Scholar at Cultural Geography of Wageningen University & Research and Emeritus Professor of Sustainable Transport and Tourism at Breda University of Applied Sciences, where until 2023 he supervised the Centre for Sustainability, Tourism and Transport. He specialises in the environmental and climatic impacts of tourism transport. Paul studied aircraft engineering at the University for Applied Sciences, Haarlem, the Netherlands. He worked as an aircraft preliminary design engineer at the late Fokker Aircraft Factory in Amsterdam, and as a wind energy researcher at the Dutch Energy Research Agency (ECN). In 2017, he received a PhD in climate change mitigation and tourism from the University of Delft. Paul has published many journal articles, conference papers, book chapters and reports on tourism transportation, climate change, ecological footprints, and eco-efficiency. Many of his publications focus on the role of air transport in increasing CO2 emissions from tourism, and the limitations of technology in reducing aviation emissions.
Jeremy Smith is a writer, strategist and long-time advocate for climate action and systems change in tourism. In 2020, he co-founded Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency, a grassroots initiative calling on tourism destinations and businesses to work together on equitable, science-based climate action. In 2021, he was a co-author of the UNTOURISM-led Glasgow Declaration for Climate Action in Tourism,. Jeremy has since led or collaborated on a number of tourism climate action projects, including the Travel Foundation’s An Introduction to Climate Justice and Tourism: A Guide for Travel Businesses; Visit Finland’s Climate Action Roadmap for Tourism; the Blueprint for Tourism Climate Action Plans (Interreg Euro-MED); and the OECS Climate Action Plan for Tourism in the Eastern Caribbean. He is the author of the books Transforming Travel: Realising the Potential of Sustainable Tourism and Clean Breaks: 500 New Ways to See the World.