Solombrino Strikes Back: Longtime GBTA Board Member Goes On The Record

When Global Business Travel Association members convene next month in San Diego, they will have before them one of the more interesting votes in memory. This isn't because of who is running for president or vice president of the organization. New occupants for those spots already are identified, with Dominion's Donna Kelliher and Johnson Downie director of business services Christle Johnson running unopposed for those positions, respectively.

What makes the ballot more interesting are the competing visions outlined by rival bylaw proposals for future governance of the organization.

It's possible neither of the proposals will garner votes by more than the required two-thirds of a quorum of GBTA's direct members. If that happens, the drivers for these proposals won't disappear. Fatigue from a perceived lack of change among GBTA's top leadership will remain. It still will be really hard to get people to commit their time to serve in leadership roles. And the association's board, which supports shifting power toward suppliers, may try to do so again.

A coalition led by NetApp senior travel manager for the Americas Mark Ziegler, a former GBTA board member, in May revealed it had submitted a proposal to abolish GBTA's Allied Leadership Council and convert its two automatic board positions into elected rather than appointed posts. In sharing information about the proposal, Ziegler declined to speak about its obvious target: Scott Solombrino. The Dav El Chauffeured Transportation Network president and CEO is in his eleventh year on the GBTA board of directors and tenth as ALC's president.

According to Solombrino, before Ziegler's "contentious," "divisive" and "regressive" proposal went public, GBTA's board already was working on potential governance changes of its own. Now on the ballot, a board-approved proposal calls for seven Allied (supplier) members, up from four, and seven Direct (buyer) members, down from nine. These board members would include the association's president, who would always be a buyer, and a vice president who would always be a supplier. The board's proposal clearly shifts power to suppliers, though its proponents argue that it's more of an equalizer and that the association would remain "buyer-led" because its president would always be a Direct member. The GBTA vice president, a supplier, would represent, lead and appoint members to the ALC.

When casting their ballots, Direct members will select the Ziegler proposal, the board proposal or a third option, "none of the above."

"The future of GBTA depends on the members' voice," according to former First Data buyer Pamela McTeer, who last month dropped out of the running for GBTA president after accepting a new job at Coca-Cola.

The perennially reappointed Solombrino is throwing his support "100 percent" behind the GBTA proposal, but also is just fine with the status quo. "I like 'none of the above,' as well," he said during an interview last month at Business Travel News' New York office.

A Political Animal 

Solombrino's business career began when he was a teenager, but actually followed his start in politics. The Revere (Mass.) High School class president in his graduation speech called out corruption related to a new high school building, prompting the school principal to withhold his diploma for an extra day, according to Solombrino. His affinity for advocacy continued into his career in the ground transportation industry when, in 1985, he co-founded the National Limousine Association.

In 2007, GBTA members approved a bylaw amendment creating two board seats for suppliers who would be elected by their peers. These new seats joined the ALC president and vice president to comprise the current four Allied board seats.

"I was the advocate who got the additional two board seats done," Solombrino told BTN editors last month. "I get no credit for it. It would never have passed without my support. Suzanne [Fletcher] was the president. She agreed, but she didn't have full support on it. I went out and campaigned for it in almost every chapter in the country and said to the direct community 'You need to do this for the Allieds.' And they did it. It passed with 86 percent of the vote."

Solombrino said he also was "a driver" when NBTA (GBTA's previous moniker) and the Association Of Corporate Travel Executives in 2009 flirted with a merger. He still supports the idea. It was after GBTA seemed to establish a more competitive stance toward the other non-profit, and amid the sometimes-nasty tones of discourse related to the two groups' near-combination, that some longtime members began questioning what they considered a lack of change at the top of GBTA.

"I have had the privilege of serving six separate presidents, six separate boards of directors and three different executive directors," Solombrino countered. "There has been some inference in some things said that I have been here too long and somehow I have become part of the fixtures. But I did not appoint myself. I was appointed. So either I am the world's greatest magician and can keep making myself reappear, or based on the metrics and the success and the growth, I have done something well."

Ziegler specifically pointed out that he's not taking issue with GBTA's growth. That would be difficult to do. After association revenues hit $14.4 million in 2011, the last year for which GBTA filed tax forms with the Internal Revenue Service, they rose to $16 million last year (pending an audit) and are projected to top $18 million this year. Annual association revenues were around $12 million when Solombrino first joined the ALC.

So why does Solombrino have enemies?

"They'll find a cure for cancer," he said. "They'll never find a cure for jealousy. When you are in any position for a long period of time, there will always be a percentage of people that are called unfavorables because they have a different agenda. I have never taken advantage of my position. I have turned down opportunities with the media over the years in this role, and it has absolutely cost my company high-profile opportunities and it has probably cost my company money. I am here as a purist. I do it because I believe it is the right thing to do for this industry. Over time when you have enormous success, some of the people who ran the organization prior to that success are going to be critical because they didn't have the success. So when membership and revenue doubles over the past four years, how do you think the presidents from 10 years ago feel? It didn't happen when they were there. So people get upset and think people have been around for too long."

The ALC 

Eliminating the ALC is "one of the most ridiculous proposals that I have ever seen in my years in GBTA," said Solombrino. "Why does it exist? Simple, it was an economic decision. NBTA had to grow financially, and the way to grow financially was not through the membership dues that the Directs were paying. That raised enough money to pay the phone bill and keep the lights on for half an hour. There was no money being raised there. The one thing we knew early on is that the Direct corporations, because their people want to be members of the organization, weren't subsidizing it. They weren't writing huge checks. They had to convince Allieds that there was value. If you are going to have a council of Allieds, what's the most important thing you want those people to be able to do? To have budget control, to be able to support the organization financially. It wasn't about democracy, it's about economics."

GBTA formed the ALC to fairly represent each supplier segment partly as a control for the popular vote. "A popular person could be a junior hotel rep from an obscure hotel company that could never deliver ROI back to the organization," Solombrino said. "If the hotel people had an ounce of brains, every year they would run candidates that represent hotel and you would have a board filled on the Allied side with hotel people. You would never see an airline representative because airlines have the lowest number of members. So the people [who Ziegler and supporters] think they are going to help, they are not going to help."

He equated the ALC president and vice president positions to that of the U.S. president's cabinet. If the goal is to represent the supplier segments regardless of their population in the association, a better analogy might be the Senate.

Solombrino made an extra effort to mention past ALC volunteers who he said made an impact and sharply criticized Ziegler's characterization of the ALC as "obsolete."

'Membership Equality' 

We'll find out in August whether any of the three ballot choices can muster votes from two-thirds of available Direct members, as per the current bylaws. If the GBTA board proposal wins, it would take a page from the playbook of 25-year-old ACTE, which formed in part because travel management company officials felt that in NBTA they were not equally represented.

Solombrino said the GBTA proposal is "about membership equality. We are all trying to row in the same direction for the advancement of the global travel community. What really brought this to a head is when we truly started to globalize. Other parts of the world don't look at it this way. 'What's this Allied/Direct thing?' they ask. If you look at some of our competitor associations, they've always had equality. Maybe they were right."

Advocating more rights for suppliers "is not new for Scott Solombrino," Solombrino reminded.

The Ziegler proposal would "take rights away from the Allieds," Solombrino said. "The Allied community has produced $100 million-plus in revenue in 10 years, yet they want to tell them, 'We want to give you less rights, not more.' And just because they think they are going to get to elect people, they think that is productive for the organization. But like I told you, look how that will work out when you look at the Allied roles. It could go in all kinds of different directions—unintended consequences. So the board's proposal is certainly better than what they proposed because it brings back membership equality. We are all in the travel business together and, yes, we recognize that our customers, the buyers, are the most important people in the world and we want to support them morally, financially and any way we can."

Additional elements of the board's proposal would make it more difficult for members like Ziegler to introduce bylaw changes. While his proposal next month will win if it gets two-thirds of a quorum of Direct members, the board's proposal would require such changes to first pass among three-quarters of board members before getting on the ballot, and then win approval from at least two-thirds of both Direct and Allied voting members.

Asked about the possibility that, should the GBTA proposal not pass, someone next year could make a proposal similar to Ziegler's, Solombrino said, "And so could I. Trust me, we have all learned a few lessons here."

Sidebar: Members Can Choose From Competing Proposals On GBTA Board Makeup 

The Global Business Travel Association last month confirmed that a proposal submitted by NetApp senior travel manager for the Americas Mark Ziegler to abolish the Allied Leadership Council and replace its two appointed board seats with seats elected by Allied members would appear on the ballot for the association's August election. The catch is, a rival proposal from GBTA and "none of the above" also will be options.

Although it will be on the ballot, the GBTA's board "unanimously" rejected Ziegler's proposal, according to ALC president Scott Solombrino, and put forth one of its own that calls for a completely new board of directors configuration—seven buyers including the president, who would be a buyer, and seven suppliers including the vice president, a supplier. All seats would be elected, except for one buyer seat held by the Chapter Presidents' Council president, who is elected by the chapter presidents. The ALC would remain in place and future proposals for bylaw changes would require the support of three-quarters of the board, plus two-thirds of Direct members and two-thirds of Allied members.

Allieds also would be able to call a special meeting, the immediate-past president would move to a non-voting role on the board and a quorum would be redefined as both 10 percent of Direct members and 10 percent of Allieds—instead of only the former.

With the organization's annual meeting nearing, GBTA last month sent members absentee ballots and details of the bylaw proposals.

Ziegler said he would continue to campaign for his proposal.

"It is a grassroots effort to correct an inequity," Ziegler said of his coalition of a few dozen buyers and suppliers. Some of them congregate on a LinkedIn group specifically designed for this effort. "Members will have to vote based on their desire to remain a buyer-led organization or move to a buyer/supplier neutral association. I never expected to seek fundamental changes to the organization like the board has proposed. It will be up to the membership to decide."

According to a GBTA letter to members, the board's "new equal representation proposal" will "continue GBTA's positive momentum and position the organization for continued success moving forward. The board will become more democratic through Direct election of all board members. At the same time, the new structure will ensure that both Direct and Allied voices throughout the organization continue to be solicited, heard and respected."

GBTA claimed it has increased membership by 123 percent since 2009.

— With reporting by Holly Leber and David Jonas 

This report originally appeared in the July 8, 2013, edition of Business Travel News.