The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) — the voice of the global business travel industry - today announced the addition of two new Advisory Board members for its GBTA Russia chapter, announced in April of this year.

Andrey Vasyukov, Procurement Manager at healthcare company Roche Diagnostics, has six years of experience in purchasing business travel services amongst a portfolio of indirect categories. He was previously a procurement specialist for Eli Lilly in Russia.

Tatiana Poplavskaya, Head of Corporate Services at Financial Corporation Otkritie, has worked as head of corporate services and head of administration roles since 1996 at both Morgan Stanley and Renaissance Capital in Russia.

The two appointments will take the total number of travel buyer advisors to five, with three suppliers completing the existing board of eight.

Talking about their appointment, Paul Tilstone, Senior Vice President Global Operations for GBTA, said, “Both of these buyers represent the fantastic volunteer culture we have experienced in Russia to date. They are knowledgeable, committed and most importantly have a real passion to see great education, training and research delivered to the Russian market.”

Mr Tilstone also said that the association had now launched its events for the autumn for GBTA Russia and had received “fantastic interest from sponsors and delegates” for both its Moscow Business travel Symposium on 2nd October and St Petersburg Business Travel Symposium on 3rd October. The latter is in association with the Finnish Business Travel Association and will see a group of Finnish travel professionals travel to the event.

GBTA has also announced dates for the inaugural Russian language version of its “Fundamentals of Travel Management” training programme it runs globally. The course will be delivered by a GBTA trained team from contracted provider, Continent Express, at the TMC’s training centre in Moscow on 11th and 12th of November.