Elevating the Role: S&P Global’s Ann Dery

“The pandemic really made me realize that my role couldn’t continue if I only thought about my goal as ‘return-to-travel.’ I realized that I needed to reinvent travel at S&P Global and pivot my role to become a much more strategic stakeholder within the organization.”

Those are the words of BTN’s 2021 Travel Manager of Year, Ann Dery, director of global travel and meetings for S&P Global. That they could have come from almost any travel manager during the Covid-19 pandemic that completely reshaped the global business travel industry in 2020 and 2021 does not dampen the effectiveness of Dery’s leadership by example. 

Dery has appeared in countless webinars and virtual industry panels since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 and she sharpened her strategic mindset from the get-go. As a result, she has inspired her own internal leadership team to view travel more strategically going forward, her suppliers to partner with each other to provide transformational solutions for the industry and her travel management peers to push their own strategic value within their organizations and to create opportunities for themselves to make a difference. 

BTN 2021 Best Practitioner: Fidelity International’s Carol Fergus

Fidelity International director of global travel, meetings and ground transportation Carol Fergus is a founding member of the diversity, equity and inclusion committees for both the Travel & Meetings Society and the Global Business Travel Association. She created documentation on how to begin conversations within corporate travel around DE&I and has led by example in implementing more inclusive travel programs. She created with her travel management company partner BCD Travel an apprenticeship program that can serve as a model for how TMC-client partnerships can bring more diversity into the managed travel space. Keep reading

“I am lucky,” said Dery, who sits within S&P Global’s procurement team and reports to head of procurement Oliver Gall. She said Gall gave her entrée to the executive team early in her tenure at S&P Global, but that the pandemic allowed her to lean into that strategic role and grow her immediate stakeholder team beyond the traditional and chief financial officer and human resources executive—or, ‘people’ officer at S&P Global. 

“The environment gave me exposure to other executive stakeholders like facilities and site managers who have become critical to reinventing travel for S&P Global, since they are the ones who control entry to our office buildings and understand the differences and regulations in play in their own regions. But what I realized during the pandemic was that not everyone has had the opportunity to make these connections within their own organizations, and whatever I could do to support others in that journey and whenever I could add value to a dialogue that would inspire travel managers to show their strategic value, I wanted to do that. Because if ever there was a time for travel managers to show their worth, it’s now.”

Moving First & Fast on Return to Travel Frameworks

“Ann took the bull by the horns and was in the war room with executives like once a week during the early parts of the pandemic,” said Festive Road co-founder and managing partner Caroline Strachan. “She was seen as an equal versus very senior people in her organization, and she just took the elevation of the role. It happened very quickly, and she kept up really quickly—based on the materials that she was sharing back with us.” 

That ‘material’ helped Festive Road shape its seminal “Permissible Travel Framework,” the creation and free sharing of which in 2020 landed Strachan on the annual list of BTN’s 25 Most Influential people in the business travel industry. 

“She’d come back to us and say, ‘This is how I’m using it,’ and we would talk through it. Ann didn’t really have many others to compare notes with … and no one had ever done it before. So when she would come back and ask, ‘What do you think?’ it really helped us to adjust certain aspects of the framework and contributed to improving it for the thousands of others who used it after her.” 

Strachan said what really stood out to her about Dery’s business acumen was how well she was able to step away from the masses of information coming toward travel managers during the pandemic and filter through the information that mattered most to her program and to the businesses her program needed to support. Also, how to say ‘no’ when executives suggested program direction that Dery knew was not right.

2021 BTN Best Practitioner: Cisco Systems’ Carolyn Pund

Cisco Systems global leader of strategic meetings management and digital events Carolyn Pund recognized that the best way to return to meetings during and after the pandemic was to protect attendee health and well-being. Her global strategic meetings management team implemented a new consultancy and services program at Cisco involving a safety advisory team for all meetings and events. More than 30 members of her global team have been certified as event health and safety advisors, and all meeting requests with an in-person component must go through a consultation. Keep reading

“Managing all those stakeholders and not saying ‘yes’ to everything they wanted… she showed commitment to her program,” said Strachan. “But Ann wouldn’t just say no, she would offer a better recommendation and was able to defend those recommendations. I haven’t seen many travel managers do that at that level.”

Strategic Partnerships to Push the Industry Forward

Since that time, Dery has moved on from the concept of permissible travel to take a ‘people, profit and planet’ approach to reinventing the S&P Global travel program. Her ‘Restart to Travel Strategy’ playbook that replaced the first framework aligned with the firm’s regional office reopenings and was commended by S&P Global’s operations committee with an equity award of stock options.  

Viewing her program through the ‘three P’ lens, however, made it clear how much transformation would be required for the program. She has been proactive about driving the right solutions, and willing to push her supplier set toward new partnerships to get the job done on a global basis. 

Prior to the pandemic, Dery implemented PredictX as the single source of travel intelligence for the S&P Global travel program. Through that tool, she also introduced automated reports that highlighted key performance indicators and offered nuanced analysis to a number of stakeholder groups within the company. 

“As an army of one,” she told BTN, “I do look for automated solutions and I want to engage innovative suppliers that I know will deliver intelligence and efficiencies to my program.”

Knowing that sustainability was on the agenda for travel moving into 2021—S&P Global established Science Based Targets in February 2021 to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040—Dery was ahead of the game, working with sustainable travel startup Thrust Carbon not only to create proposals for her company but also to connect the newcomers with PredictX so she could bring enhanced travel sustainability intelligence through established data channels that serve her businesses. 

She’s been cognizant, however, that startup companies require quick sales cycles to stay competitive—and has advocated for a steady implementation timeline to serve the S&P Global travel restart while also serving the strategic sustainability goals for the overall organization. 

BTN 2021 Best Practitioner: Ford Motor Co.’s Stephen Swift

Reporting into HR, Ford Motor Co. EMEA and APAC travel manager Stephen Swift recognized impending risk issues for business travel given new and newly enforced municipal and country-based tax, visa and work-permit regulations. In response, he reshaped travel approval with tax compliance as an integrated process. Though he took the reins of compliance through his role in travel, he found he needed providers outside of the traditional travel management universe to deliver the solution he was looking for. Keep reading

“She’s been incredibly vocal internally to almost be our advocate [at S&P Global] and sort of mentioned not just to her colleagues but to her superiors as well that it’s not good to take two weeks to come to a decision and then say we need to change [something] tomorrow and expect us to manage both expectations,” said Thrust Carbon head of partnerships Glenn Thorsen. “She knows those challenges [of working with startups] and has been very supportive against those types of situations.” 

Dery also introduced European ground transportation provider Gett—which just completed an initial public offering as part of their entrance strategy for the U.S. market—to ground transportation marketplace platform GroundSpan. Realizing that the two providers could complement each others’ work to serve her travel program globally, Dery worked to forge a partnership that now is positioned to serve other global programs, according to those companies’ executives.

“Ann had a lot to do with bringing us together,” said GroundSpan founder and president Tony Bonanno. “She saw the high-level value between both of us and recognized that putting both companies together with a strategic partnership would accomplish her goals of allowing her travelers to book through [numerous] channels globally.” Plus, he added, Dery wants the whole program to match her vision, and ground transportation was just as important as air, hotel and car rental. “That’s not the case for every travel manager; Ann is at the forefront of the change happening with global corporates managing ground transportation globally resulting in a complete, strategic program.”

Gett managing director of ground transportation management marketplace Matteo de Renzi added similar praise for Dery. “Not only was she a very strong facilitator for our relationship, but she is also a source of inspiration for what can be done when you truly think strategically. We are now building this global transportation grid with the support of GroundSpan in the U.S. and in the rest of the world.”

Moving Into 2022

Dery laid much of the groundwork for her 2021 strategies and accomplishments in the years leading up to pandemic. What she didn’t do was deviate from her goals to be a strategic player for her organization, and when crisis hit, she didn’t shy away. 

“I realized I had an opportunity that a lot of other travel managers don’t have,” she said, citing the support of her direct manager for her independent work ethic and full immersion in the industry dialogue about reinventing travel. “While there was a lot of fear at the beginning of the pandemic that the core of the travel managers’ job had disappeared, it didn’t take very long to realize that what was happening instead could make this moment the most exciting time to be a travel manager.

“I love travel, and I became a travel manager because there was always something new to learn—there’s the sourcing, the communications, the technology solutions and implementations. But now there are so many more strategic ways that travel can align with the organization. Covid-19 revealed that, and travel managers can meet those challenges with meaningful solutions and programs.”

Gall, Dery’s direct manager, may have said it best in an email message he sent to her upon getting a confidential heads up that Dery would be BTN’s 2021 Travel Manager of the Year.

He wrote: “For you to have taken on what must have been one of the most challenging periods of your career and generate the opportunity, new strategy and perspective that you have embraced and converted into market-leading thinking is extremely impressive. Your tenacity and thought leadership is personally very motivating for me and a wonderful example to so many members of our team.”