Secretary-General of the United Nations, 1997-2006
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient, 2001
Board of Directors, United Nations Foundation
Chairman of the Board of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
Li Ka Shing Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy

Kofi A. Annan was the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, serving two terms from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006 and was the first to emerge from the ranks of United Nations staff. In 2001 Kofi Annan and the United Nations were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace with the citation praising his leadership for “bringing new life to the organisation”.

Since leaving the United Nations, Kofi Annan has continued to press for better policies to meet the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly in Africa. He has also continued to use his experience to mediate and resolve conflict. In Kenya in early 2008, Mr. Annan led the African Union’s Panel of Eminent African Personalities to help find a peaceful resolution to the post-election violence.

CEO Airsavings

Raphael Bejar, founder and CEO of Airsavings, SA, has consistently been in the vanguard of ancillary revenue innovation, leveraging the capabilities of the online booking path to create new revenue generation opportunities for airlines on four continents.

Mr. Bejar is a 20 year veteran of the airline industry, working primarily in finance and purchasing, eventually translating his expertise in the field into Airsavings’ group purchasing and ancillary revenue development model for many of Europe’s leading low-cost carriers. He has also worked with Jet Finance, Credit Foncier, and SH & E, holds degrees in engineering from ESTACA and in finance and banking from Paris University.

He is a frequent speaker at airline conferences on the topics of ancillary revenue development and innovation.

Regional Director - Europe Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA)

Ms. Marion Buttler is the Regional Director-Europe of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA). Her major responsibility is, in partnership with PATA's private- and public-sector members, to enhance the sustainable growth, value and quality of travel and tourism to, from and within the Asia Pacific region.

Her experience spans over 20 years in tourism in the areas of sales, marketing, public relations, destination marketing, research, conferences, forums, crisis management and many more.

Prior to joining PATA in February 2003, Marion Buttler served for 4 years as Manager Central Europe for Tourism Australia.
Her responsibilities were the development and implementation of Tourism Australia's strategies in the markets of Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands and the former Eastern European countries.

From 1987 to 1998 she was the Sales Manager Germany & Austria for Qantas Airways based in Frankfurt.

After the completion of her studies, Marion Buttler started her career in the tourism industry in the hotel sector with Canadian Pacific Plaza Hotels.

Chief Executive, Ehrenberg Kommunikation

Magnus started his career in communications, when, during the period 1984 – 1987 he was Press Secretary to the Mayor of Malmö. He was member of the Malmö City Council until 1988.

In 1989 he left Malmö to take up the position of Campaign Manager for the local
CDU organisation in Hamburg. A year later he left active politics and took up the position of Deputy Managing Director of the Swedish-German shipping company Euroway, which operated cruise services between Malmö and Lübeck.

At the end of 1992 Magnus Ehrenberg decided to start his own PR agency in
Hamburg. Later the business moved to Lübeck. EHRENBERG Kommunikation now has offices in Lübeck, Malmö, Copenhagen, Oslo and several Partner agencies in Europe and South Africa.

CEO, Uleotech

Before moving to the inflight retail industry, Pierre Freyssinet held various Sales & Marketing positions in various airlines then joined the movie theatre business when French company Pathe Cinema decided to adapt the US concept of multiplexes to the French market. Multiplexes business model is largely based on ancillary revenues and notably snack & beverage sales.

With this dual experience, Freyssinet partnered with French duty-free giant Aelia in 1997 to found Aeroboutique Inflight Retail (AIR), a pure player in the in-flight concession business. After landing the much-coveted Air France contract, the company quickly expanded its business to the UK, Morocco, Switzerland, Spain and Italy. Freyssinet left AIR in 2010 to explore new facets of the inflight business. He has started-up Uleotech, an engineering company designing and marketing innovative on-board sales equipment, whilst co-founding a fashion jewellery company with ex-Oxygen figure Nadia Skouri.

Professor, Institute for Management Development (IMD) and University of Lausanne

Stéphane Garelli is a Professor at both the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), one of the world's leading business schools, and at the University of Lausanne. He is also the director of IMD's World Competitiveness Center and is an authority on World Competitiveness: his research focuses particularly on how nations and enterprises compete on International markets.

He publishes the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook - the most comprehensive and reputed study in the field of the competitiveness of nations. This yearly report compares the competitiveness of forty-six nations using more than 300 criteria.

Stéphane Garelli is widely considered to be one of the top lecturers on economic and business matters. He has a unique ability to analyze and describe the world economic environment as it evolves, and to draw conclusions about what changes in the world economy actually mean for companies and individuals alike.

Professor Garelli is closely connected to the world of business. He is, among others, Chairman of the Board of Directors of "Le Temps", the leading French language Swiss newspaper. He was formerly Chairman of the Board of the Sandoz Financial and Banking Holding, and member of the board of the Banque Edouard Constant. The author of numerous publications in the field of competitiveness, international trade and investments, he is also a columnist in several magazines. For twelve years he was permanent senior adviser to the European management of Hewlett-Packard, and before that Managing Director of the World Economic Forum and of the Davos Symposium for many years. He is a member of a number of institutes, such as: China Enterprise Management Association, Board of the ‘Fondation Jean Monet pour l'Europe’, The Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences, the Mexican Council for Competitiveness, etc.

He was a member of the Constitutional Assembly of his local state - Vaud, Switzerland from 1999 to 2002.

Buying & Merchandise Director – Harding Brothers Retail Ltd.

Trevor joined the Board of Harding Brothers in spring 2008.
Prior to this Trevor enjoyed 20 years in the Travel Retail Industry and an 8 year spell with a Venture Capital Fund Management Group specializing in retail and consumer goods start ups.

Trevor began his retail career with Allders International rising to the position of Global Buying Director looking after shops in Airports, Ships, Ferries, Downtown and Border locations. During this period he led many merchandise initiatives including the first refit of Cunard’s QE2 and the creation of airport concept stores like Whiskies of the World and Chocolate Box. He was also instrumental in partnering with many leading luxury brands to open their first stand alone boutiques in airports.

After the acquisition of Allders by the Swissair Group Trevor moved to Zurich to oversee the integration of the two organisations with a second acquisition, Downtown Duty Free, into a single global entity and led the merchandise project for the opening of Chek Lap Kok Airport.
He freely admits that the pull of the TR industry proved too strong to resist and is thrilled to be a part of it once more.

President, Tax Free World Association

Erik Juul-Mortensen is President of a Tax Free World Association (TFWA).
A founding member of TFWA and a member of its Management Committee  since the inception of the Association Erik served as Vice President from 1986 to 1997. The election to President followed in September 1999.

From 1987 to 1991 Erik was Vice President at Danish Distillers Ltd in charge of the export and duty free division. In 1991 followed the promotion to Senior Vice President and Export Director and in 1996 to Senior Vice President and International Director.

Following the acquisition in December 1999 of Danish Distillers by V&S Group in Stockholm, Erik transferred to V&S International Brands in Stockholm as Senior Vice President and Commercial Director. In 2003 followed the promotion to President of V&S ABSOLUT Global Duty Free with responsibility for the entire V&S portfolio including Absolut Vodka in the global duty free market. In the same period he also served as Managing Director of V&S Deutschland, the German domestic market subsidiary of V&S Group. From 2005 to 2010 Erik served as President of Maxxium Global Travel Retail, a highly successful division of Maxxium Worldwide which was a joint venture between V&S Group, Remy-Cointreau, The Edrington Group and Beam Global Spirits & Wine. 

Erik is also a member of the Supervisory and Managing Boards of ETRC (European Travel Retail Council) as well as a board member of MEDFA (Middle East Duty Free Association) and APTRA (Asia Pacific Travel Retail Association).

Partner and Co-founder of m1nd-set - Global Marketing Intelligence & Solutions

Dr. Peter Mohn (42) graduated as a Psychologist and earned a Ph.D. in Business Psychology at the University of Göttingen, Germany. Peter is of Norwegian origin, has lived in Denmark, Belgium, The Netherlands, Finland, UK and Germany and lives in Switzerland since 2002. Peter has been working for various leading global market research agencies since 1993 and has been in top management positions since 2000. He has been specializing in Travel Retail research since 2004 and consults various leading brands as well as shop operators in this field.

Based at Lake Geneva, m1nd-set is specialized in Travel Retail and Airport marketing research & consulting on a global basis. m1nd-set conducts consumer research at airports, at border shops, on ferries and cruises on over 60 markets worldwide for global Travel Retail brands as well as operators, airports etc. m1nd-set conducts quantitative and qualitative research on many different subjects, such as Travel Retail shopping motivation & behaviour, mystery shopping, brand awareness and evaluation, price elasticity (conjoint surveys), promotion effectiveness, observation of shoppers, travel retail exclusive product testing, segmentation surveys etc.

CEO and Group Managing Director, Salvatore Ferragamo

Michele Norsa was appointed CEO and Group Managing Director of Salvatore Ferragamo on 2 October 2006. Prior to this, he was General Director of the Valentino Fashion Group S.p.A from July 2005 and CEO of the Valentino Group from May 2002.

He spent five years with Marzotto Spa, where he was General Director Apparel Sector as well as Chairman of Marzotto USA and Marzotto France between 1997 and 2002. Other senior roles he has held include President and CEO of Benetton Sportsystem Active and Group CEO of Sandys (Sergio Tacchini). He was President of the Rizzoli Book Division and Chairman of Sansoni between 1976 and 1985. Previously,  at Rizzoli he had been appointed to different posts in Buenos Aires, Geneva and New York. Michele Norsa graduated with first class honours in Business Administration from the Università Cattolica, Milan, in 1971.