NBTA Changes Committee Chairs

<B>NBTA Changes Committee Chairs</B>

By Bruce Serlen

The National Business Travel Association this month announced changes to its hotel and technology committees, effective immediately. Wendy Nathan, manager of travel services for Johnson & Johnson, was named new chairperson of the hotel committee, while Jack Chu, project manager for travel systems at Chevron Services Co., assumes leadership of the technology committee.

"There's such depth of leadership within these committees that it made sense to cycle in new chairpeople in these two instances," said Cindy Perper, NBTA president. "Fresh blood is always healthy because with it comes a fresh perspective and fresh ideas."

The president and other members of NBTA's board of directors serve two-year terms. "Leadership at the top of the association changes, so there's no reason leadership at the committee-level shouldn't change regularly as well," Perper said. As part of their duties, committee chairs determine the size of their committees. Accordingly, Perper thinks the two committees, which are among NBTA's largest, will become smaller. "Both Wendy and Jack are strong leaders and will have clear ideas, not only about the size of the committees but about the agendas they need to pursue," she said. "Certainly, there'll be interest from the hotel committee to continue to evolve the electronic format of the standard RFP form and release definitions of commonly used industry terms, such as last room availability."

In both cases, there are waiting lists of NBTA members interested in serving on the committees. "It benefits the association to get as many members as possible actively involved," Perper said. "Wendy and Jack's predecessors, Rick Wakida from Airtouch and Jennifer Loftin from Cisco Systems, respectively, did an excellent job in these roles. We thank them for their efforts and look forward to their future contributions.