GBTA expands in Russia with two Advisory Board volunteer appointments

EUROPE – Andrey Vasyukov and Tatiana Poplavskaya have joined the Global Business Travel Association’s (GBTA) Russia Chapter as Advistory Board members.
 
Vasyukov, the Procurement Manager at healthcare company Roche Diagnostics, has six years of experience in purchasing business travel services among a portfolio of indirect categories. He was previously a procurement specialist for Eli Lilly in Russia.
 
Tatiana Poplavskaya, the Head of Corporate Services at Financial Corporation Otkritie, has worked as head of corporate services and head of administration roles since 1996 at both Morgan Stanley and Renaissance Capital in Russia.
 
The two appointments will take the total number of travel buyer advisors to five, with three suppliers completing the existing board of eight (pictured).
 
“Both of these buyers represent the volunteer culture we have experienced in Russia to date,” says Senior VP Global Operations for GBTA, Paul Tilstone. “They are knowledgeable and, importantly, have a real passion to see great education, training and research delivered to the Russian market.”
 
Tilstone said the association had launched its events for the autumn for GBTA Russia and had received “fantastic interest from sponsors and delegates” for both its Moscow Business travel Symposium on 2 October and St Petersburg Business Travel Symposium on 3 October. The latter is in association with the Finnish Business Travel Association and will see a group of Finnish travel professionals travel to the event.
 
GBTA has also announced dates for the inaugural Russian language version of its ‘Fundamentals of Travel Management’ training programme it runs globally. The course will be delivered by a GBTA trained team from contracted provider, Continent Express, at the TMC’s training centre in Moscow on 11 and 12 of November 2013.
 
Collectively, GBTA’s 6,000-plus members manage over US$340bn of global business travel and meetings expenditure annually.
 
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