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Karen Hutchings has established Cobb & Hutch consulting and has joined HeadBox as board director
Former EY travel managers Karen Hutchings and Ian Spearing, who both departed the business last year, have announced the launch of their own business travel consultancies.
Hutchings, who was global head of travel, meetings and events and spent more than ten years at EY, has established Cobb & Hutch Consulting.
In her first formally announced project, Hutchings has been named board director at event tech company HeadBox. The company delivered more than £50 million’s worth of meetings and events bookings to host venues in the UK, US and EMEA in 2023, and was adopted by Hutchings as part of EY’s UK meetings and events programme.
According to HeadBox, she will support the company’s continued growth and help prepare it for expansion into new geographical markets. Hutchings said she is excited to “join a company that has AI-powered software and technology at the heart of its offering – an essential ingredient to solving some of the key problems facing our rapidly changing sector.”
In a recent LinkedIn post about the launch of Cobb & Hutch Consulting, Hutchings said: “Having spent more years than I care to mention being employed [I] decided to challenge myself to do something completely different.”
In 2023 Hutchings received a Lifetime Achievement Award at GBTA’s WINiT awards and was named on Business Travel News’ 2023 Most Influential list in recognition of her work developing EY’s Sustainable Travel Approval Tool (STAT) in collaboration with IBM. She was also inducted into BTN’s Business Travel Hall of Fame in 2022.
Hutchings served as chair of the UK’s Institute of Travel Management from 2017 to 2020 and prior to joining EY in 2012 held travel management roles at AIG, Citi and Merrill Lynch, and also worked for travel management company HRG.
Ian Spearing has founded Travel Evolution Consulting
Meanwhile Spearing, who was global innovation and technology leader at EY, has established Travel Evolution Consulting and is involved with several tech companies and start-ups. They include meeting platform TROOP, with additional roles to be announced in due course.
Spearing was named a Best Practitioner at BTN’s Travel Manager of the Year awards in 2023 and was lauded for his engagement with start-ups and implementation of new technology and tools. Last summer he contributed a guest column in which he advised those exploring new technology “not to let the pursuit of perfection impede innovation”.
Prior to his six years at EY he held roles with Amadeus, Eurostar and British Airways.
Hutchings and Spearing, both based in the UK, have been widely praised for their appetite for innovation and pursuit of new processes, including the introduction of a blockchain-based portal for employees to book leisure trips and the launch of a combined air and rail RFP last year.
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