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The 2nd TTRC Sustainable Travel and Tourism Seminar will host conversations around Sustainability Monitoring and Evaluation (SME). The rationale for deeper engagement with SME is clear – how can companies implement sustainable practices and measure their effectiveness? What are the current best-practices and viable measurement and evaluation techniques? How can we identify the right evaluative tools for particular challenges?
The 2nd Sustainable Travel and Tourism Seminar hosted at NYU´s Tisch Center for Hospitality brought together industry, NGOs, academics, practitioners, and students in conversation around Sustainability Monitoring and Evaluation. As issues of sustainability have become ever more central to travel and tourism operations, we convened this seminar to hear from industry professionals, DMOs, practitioners, academics and futurists to discuss the state-of-the-art in monitoring and evaluation.
The impetus for this seminar grew out of conversations generated during the 2022 Seminar. There was a general feeling that although sustainability is a notoriously fuzzy word with multiple and conflicting definitions, the practice of sustainability is even more heterogeneous. Throughout the tourism value chain [sic] there are conflicting approaches, definitions, data gathering methodologies, reporting and accounting tools. The complex questions that arise from a veritable alphabet soup of development goals, legal requirements, reporting standards, and evaluation agencies focus on three principal questions:
What does sustainable practice mean?
How do we measure sustainability?
How do we convert our findings and data into ever more robust sustainable practices?
If our first seminar was able to offer some of the contours of the first question, our hope in placing a call for answers to the second question was that we would develop a deeper understanding of the state-of-the-art in sustainability monitoring and evaluation.
Links to watch the Seminar:
TTRC.pdfBiographies
Biographies
New York University
Christopher Gaffney is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Tisch Center for Hospitality in the School of Professional Studies at New York University. A Vermont-born, Texas-trained geographer, Gaffney has taught in Taiwan, Brazil, Switzerland, and at several universities in the United States. His earlier work focused on the intersection of urban studies and sports mega-events. Gaffney´s 2008 monograph, Temples of the Earthbound Gods, explored the interdigitation of urban development and sporting cultures in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, Gaffney served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Latin American Geography from 2014-2018, guiding the journal´s award-winning transformation. Gaffney has appeared in a slew of documentary films and is often quoted in the world´s leading media outlets. Gaffney ran an influential blog in the lead up to the 2016 Olympics, Hunting White Elephants, and has written extensively on the impacts and realpolitik of sports mega-events across numerous formats. Prior to joining NYU, Gaffney was the Project Manager for Team Rubicon's Long-Term Disaster Relief project in post-Maria Puerto Rico. Currently, Gaffney directs of the Travel and Tourism Research Collaboratory at the Tisch Center, which hosts his three streams of research: Global Tourism Risk, Regenerative Tourism Design, and Global Nomadism. He is also a director at ALTR.earth, a non-profit consultancy that works with municipalities, hospitality enterprises, and civil society on long-term planning and integrated systems design.
Pace University
Claudia G. Green is a tenured Full Professor of Management with more than 23 years of teaching and research experience at Pace University, Lubin School of Business where she has been the Director of the Hospitality and Tourism Management Program for the last 23 years. In 2021, she also became the Director of the International Management Program and was the previous Director of the Center for Global Business Programs coordinating international travel for Lubin Business School students. She has lead 20 international student field experiences to Brazil, Cambodia and Italy. Dr. Green has presented her research in sustainable tourism development in Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Thailand, Hong Kong, Dubai and the United States. In 2014, Dr. Green was awarded a four-year contract as a Fulbright Specialist focusing on sustainable tourism development in Brazil and Cambodia. She is currently a Faculty Fellow at the Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Dr. Green earned her PhD at Virginia Tech and was formerly an Associate Professor in the School of Health and Human Sciences at the University of North Carolina 1992-1999. She was also an Adjunct Professor at the NYU Tisch Center for Hospitality and Tourism and the Steinhart School of Education from 2000-2020.
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Stefania Denise Escobar is a PhD candidate in Economics and Management at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Italy). Her research interest concerns the study of smart cities and smart tourism strategies and the consequent impact on urban sustainability. Her research has been presented at International Conferences such as TTRA, APAC-CHRIE, SSPCR EURAC, 3rd World Congress of Smart Destinations. Before starting her PhD, Stefania worked in the tourism sector as Destination and City manager which allow her to have a concrete understanding of the sector and its challenges and gave her the motivation to start a PhD to study the phenomenon from different perspectives.
After working as a civil rights and business lawyer, Julian Darwall has focused on emerging models in hospitality and travel. He designed and manages The Lorca, a portfolio of New York mountain properties offering access to nature. Because vacation rentals represent both potential growth and harm for communities and ecosystems, Julian is researching these impacts as he develops financing models for small-scale hospitality. He teaches Design of Business at Parsons, with a focus on sustainability and regenerative design.
New York State Tourism Industry Association NYSTIA
Since joining the New York State Tourism Industry Association (NYSTIA) as President & CEO in September of 2018, Bob has focused NYSTIA's programming on cutting edge marketing & data analytics, 360 degree advocacy outreach, and transformational destination stewardship strategies. With these initiatives has come a restatement of vision and purpose for NYSTIA, along with enhanced member communications, a focus on large scale collaborative marketing, and re-branding to reflect a more energized and focused organization. During and following the pandemic crisis, Bob worked hand-in-hand with tourism industry members across the state and leadership in Washington, DC and Albany to coordinate response and recovery efforts. Post-pandemic initiatives include the creation of member task force teams on sustainability, workforce development and I-D-E-A (inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Accessibility). Today, the NYSTIA is a nonprofit, member-driven organization at the vanguard of tourism destination stewardship and long-term strategic planning.
With a career spanning 27+ years, Siva brings rich experience in consulting, IT services, and software products. Most recently, Siva was the CEO of LitmusWorld, a B2B SaaS company, and TSI that provided TPF services, products, and solutions to worldwide airlines, GDSs, and hotels. Before TSI, Siva spent 13 years at Mindtree, where he held several positions, including as the Global Head for Travel, Transportation, and Hospitality industry vertical and as the Global Head for Data & Analytics Solutions. He has also worked at Advanced Computer Software Group, Manthan Systems, and at Cambridge Technology Partners (now called Atos Consulting), where he started his career. Siva holds a bachelor’s degree in Electronics & Communication and an MS in Computer Science from the University of Rhode Island, USA. When Siva is not running the company, you will probably find him running down a trail, cycling, or reading a (non-business, non-fiction) book.
Aimee Henning is a sustainability expert who is passionate about using circular design and systems thinking principles to address current sustainability challenges. Her primary objective is to assist organizations in making the transition from a linear economic model to a circular economic model, utilizing qualitative and quantitative frameworks that guarantee the effective allocation of limited resources. Aimee's key focus areas include circular design, stakeholder analysis and engagement, value mapping, process reengineering, and sustainability strategies. Before pursuing her Master's, Aimee spent ten years working in Product Design, Interior Architecture, and Project Management. She has also worked in finance as an analyst and in banking as part of the business development team. Aimee's design experience is demonstrated by over 50 successfully executed projects in commercial, cultural, and residential spaces. Her approach to design prioritizes user experience, incorporating empathy-driven design principles guided by systems thinking. She has collaborated with some of the best architectural firms in the industry, including international firm Adjaye Associates and local firms Daffonchio Architects, Design Workshop, Local Studio, and Paragon Architects.
Savinien Caracostea is a kaleidoscopic creative, thinker & strategist based in NYC, working at the intersection of design, culture & technology. He co-founded the META Foundation, a web3 non-profit exploring the future of travel. In addition to consulting international fashion and hospitality brands on their creative strategy and innovation, he brings his expertise in graphic, spatial and culinary design to imagine, generate and activate the commercial and leisure spaces of tomorrow. Savinien has degrees in Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design and Cornell University, and taught at the Städelschule Architecture Class in Frankfurt and the NYU Steinhardt Food Studies Program.
Cornell University
O’Shannon Burns is a researcher and sustainability consultant with 15 years of experience shaping mission-driven businesses and embedding regenerative principles into operations with a focus on travel, tourism, climate action, conservation, and environmental justice. As Program Manager of Cornell University’s Sustainable Tourism Asset Management Program at the SC Johnson College of Business, O’Shannon co-developed a framework for sustainable tourism destination management that now underpins the online eCornell course on Sustainable Tourism Destination Management. These innovative data-driven methods for tourism destination management include tools to design a climate action plan, document and monitor social and natural capital, improve land-use planning, engage with local communities, and manage public-private partnerships. O’Shannon also leads Ochre, a consulting practice that collaborates with organizations to create custom sustainability strategies and build the systems and programs needed to operationalize sustainability into their work. In the tourism sector, O’Shannon has worked directly with tour operators, destination management companies (DMC’s), hotels, and destination marketing organizations (DMO’s) to implement sustainability frameworks. She has experience helping businesses with B Corp certification, GRI, Integrated Reporting, and navigating the complexity of certification in the travel and tourism space. Previously, O’Shannon spent a decade at National Geographic collaborating with explorers as they conducted field work, spearheading sustainability initiatives, and operating exploratory educational travel experiences on all seven continents. While there, she created and was then appointed to National Geographic Partners’ first full-time sustainability position, overseeing sustainability for the company’s travel business and serving as an internal sustainability leader and expert. O’Shannon holds a master’s degree in Sustainability from Harvard University and a bachelor of science in Physical Geography with a focus on Climate Science from the Pennsylvania State University.
Marcus Aurelius has a strong academic background in astrophysics and philosophy, combined with professional experience in data science, machine learning, and software engineering. With a decade of experience in data analysis, he has recently taken a keen interest in the potential of blockchain technology and smart contracts to revolutionize various sectors of the economy. Marcus is excited to leverage his data science and engineering skill set to scale climate action at KlimaDAO. His favorite part about working for a DAO is that, in addition to his technical work building data infrastructure and dashboards, he also get to dust off his philosophical training to formulate the strategic vision of KlimaDAO as a member of the Core Team, and hone his public speaking skills by breaking down the complex technology they're using in simple terms at events like this.
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