BTN Names Moderna's Steinke Travel Manager of the Year

Business Travel News on Wednesday announced the recipient of the 2026 Travel Manager of the Year award along with three Best Practitioners. Moderna director of travel, meetings and fleet Jennifer Steinke received the high honor this year, during the annual award reception that took place at the InterContinental Hotel Magnificent Mile in Chicago.

Steinke, who received five nominations in the lead-up to the final announcement, has leaned hard into artificial intelligence for the Moderna travel program. She has created within Moderna’s internal enterprise AI platforms a large language model interface behind which sits an AI-first booking tool partner BizTrip.ai, an AI-first data system Cerebri.ai and midsize TMC Cain Travel to serve as a fulfillment partner.

Travelers initiate bookings via natural language prompts that return trip options based on company policy and are personalized on dynamic profiles that live in the BizTrip.ai booking tool. She uses internal benchmarking at the point of sale to provide an instant gut check—and sometimes an alert—to travelers about trip costs and how they compare for similar bookings made by Moderna travelers.

Critically, the traveler profiles include not only their loyalty numbers with hotel and airline suppliers, but also their loyalty status levels, which have become the lynchpin of Steinke’s value strategy. She calls it the Policy of One and the platform she has created is Travel and Meetings Intelligence—or TAMI.

Based on a traveler’s loyalty status, Steinke has created a model for understanding total trip cost and total itinerary value by creating a matrix of policy permitted booking permutations and bumping that up against the traveler’s loyalty status to understand elements like how lounge access can offset meals, how loyalty might offset extra legroom charges and also allow for the probability of getting an upgrade. The impact of status on baggage fees is accounted for in that matrix and, ultimately, the ability to negotiate and display special amenities and promotions at the point of sale regardless of loyalty status is also baked into the tool.

“By matrixing these value nuances—and there are hundreds of them—Steinke has not just implemented a program. She has provided a model,” said BTN VP of content Elizabeth West during the award presentation. “It’s a model by which AI makes dynamic calculations at the point of sale to drive decision-making for the individual traveler at that moment. This kind of innovation regardless of the suppliers working behind the scenes gives the industry a new way of thinking about how to influence travelers at the point of sale but also delight them with personalization and relevance that drives trust in a travel program.”

2026 Best Practitioners

BTN’s 2026 Best Practitioners shared a DNA this year. Each has put their program in an innovation gap with new—and renewed—suppliers in a way that has deeply influenced product and service development and provided the critical “voice of the buyer” in a market in which change is happening fast. Each has provided pioneering proof points for new platforms entering the industry in a way that shows the travel management community that new platforms are working and have been built to accommodate complex business travel needs.

Google head of travel Rob Bray has worked with partners American Express Global Business Travel, Concur, Sabre and major airlines partners specifically on content and NDC connections to drive pace and governance through the process of creating parity with consumer tools. In addition, Bray has helped define roadmaps and has worked through the details of how a large, complex travel program will configure on Amex GBT and Concur’s new partnership Complete, maintaining a direct relationship with Concur while taking advantage of the innovation pace and deep integrations that the Complete partnership aims to provide. Google will launch on the Complete platform in a matter of weeks.  

McDonald’s global travel manager Koreen Barbara consolidated the hamburger chain’s travel program over the past 18 months. The process produced efficiencies throughout the program, but Barbara did not consolidate into a one-stop-shop. Instead, she pursued a future-proofing strategy that included contracts with two TMCs—placing 80 percent of the program in an innovation-forward platform with Direct Travel, Spotnana and Avenir, where she helped to workshop certain aspects of those tools to serve her program while awaiting global capabilities. In particular, Barbara has worked with her new tech and service providers on their meetings and events modules to ensure seamless travel and attendee management for event participants, even those who may not have profiles in McDonald’s travel systems. BTN recognizes the conscious choice not to globalize but to pursue new tech platforms where possible is a necessary and critical buyer strategy that supports industry innovation. Given the realities of that decision, however, Barbara was also the first to integrate the Spotnana booking tool with AI-powered data platform PredictX.

Adobe senior manager of travel and expense KathyBurdge inherited the Adobe travel program’s contract with Navan, when she joined the company in 2022. Since then her “fingerprints have been all over the Navan product” according to Navan SVP of travel marketplace Dane Molter. When Burdge took over that relationship, she saw some challenges, but she also leaned way into the progressive opportunities that Navan held in front of her, even as the platform in its earlier days had been met with a wave of skepticism by the managed travel industry. Lately, Navan has won a number of impressively large and complex travel programs, including finance and healthcare. Burdge has been at Navan’s side serving as the voice of the enterprise buyer pushing for better service models, product and pricing improvements for multi-city and complex itineraries, better booking support and enhanced approval workflows and AI-driven reporting enhancements and nuanced risk management. Burdge led with trust at those collaboration points and has come out with a program that performs at the top of its game. Plus, every improvement has benefitted the enterprises that have come later to Navan and has helped mature the platform to make it widely competitive in the market today across all program sizes.

“Nominations for our awards this year were highly competitive,” said BTN Group executive vice president Louis Magliaro. “We want to congratulate our winners, who have not only advanced their own programs but also have driven industry advancement in a way that is immediately meaningful for peers. That’s a critical role for travel buyers to play, especially when change is happening fast.”