Sally Alington

An experienced business leader and entrepreneur, Sally Alington is the Founder and CEO of the Ethos Farm Group of Companies including Ethos Farm Limited (UK) and Ethos Farm Americas Incorporated (USA), businesses that are widely recognised leaders in the field of global customer and employee experience (CX & EX) consultancy, learning, innovations and data.

Sally’s passion for this sector comes from over two decades of working with airports, airlines, retailers, travel retailers, hospitality and leisure organisations and it is this frontline and hands-on experience that drives the belief at the heart of Ethos Farm – ‘Your employees are your biggest asset, they are the ambassadors of your brand and should be at the front and centre of organisational culture and CX strategies’.

With Customer Experience now being the main platform upon which organisations compete, Ethos Farm’s services have never been in more demand. The company was listed in The Sunday Times 100 this year ranking as the 12th Fastest-Growing Private Company in the UK.

Ethos Farm is a Great Place to Work Top 100 organisation, Top 100 for Women and a Top 100 for Wellbeing.

Sally was a finalist in the EY Entrepreneur of the Year, is an everywoman Ambassador and was the UK everywoman 2023 Next Level Entrepreneur of the Year. She is a long-standing member of Women in Travel Retail (WiTR) and has aimed to make a positive contribution to the travel retail industry over the last two decades.

Jilly Brocklebank

Jilly Brocklebank is the Founder of Recruit GTR, a boutique recruitment service dedicated to travel retail. She is recognised for her long career in the industry and being a people-focused HR professional.

Jilly has spent over 25 years in retail, mainly in the beauty industry within UK department stores before making the move to Heathrow to commence an 11-year stint with World Duty Free in a variety of roles from Operations to HR and Resourcing. This experience affirmed Jilly’s passion for travel retail and nurturing people to achieve their best.

Moving on to Estee Lauder Companies, Jilly gained valuable experience of working with vast teams and people at all levels, further embedding the passion and enthusiasm for finding and sourcing great talent to work within brands. Matching the right people to roles and talent planning for the future continues to inspire Jilly and is the topic she will most talk about in the industry.

Created in 2018, Recruit GTR is a dedicated specialised service for recruiting in travel retail. Jilly has quickly become the person ‘in the know’ when it comes to excelling your career in the channel, and she works closely with brands and retailers to consider and plan ahead for recruitment needs and talent planning.

Heidi Van Roon M.B.A. CPHR

Heidi Van Roon is Founder and President for the SPARK Group and recognised in travel retail for her bespoke staffing and recruiting services. Her leadership style is founded on well-informed context, courageous and creative collaborations, bespoke promotional programmes, and genuine heart.

Heidi has received numerous awards and recognition for her leadership skills, with testimonials from global beauty houses naming her team as the benchmark for professionalism and highest performance in Canada and USA airports. She sets the bar high and continues to challenge the status quo. Heidi understands the relationship between best practices in HR and team performance.

Her white paper on Elevating Travel Retail Careers was a finalist in the Trinity Challenge (Singapore 2022) and the Frontier People and Planet: Diversity & Inclusion Award (Cannes 2023), while SPARK was the winner of the Frontier/DFNI Airport Team of the Year – Americas in 2021.

Heidi is a university guest speaker and has participated as a panelist and co-moderator at industry events. She is a member of the Chartered Professionals in Human Resources BC and holds an MBA from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC Canada.

Martin Moodie

Martin Moodie created The Moodie Davitt Report (then called The Moodie Report) in 2002, driving it to prominence from a start-up to the leading provider of business intelligence for the travel retail and airport commercial revenue sectors. He also conceived The Trinity Forum and the Airport Food & Beverage (FAB) Conference & Awards.

A New Zealander, now based out of London and Hong Kong, Martin has been involved in this industry for 37 years. From 1992 he was Editor and, from 1996, Managing Director of Duty-Free News International.

In 2002 he took the fateful decision to step out on his own and develop travel retail’s first digitally led media and business intelligence service. Within two years The Moodie Report was market leader, a position it has since strengthened.

Today The Moodie Davitt Report ranks as one of the world’s most successful business-to-business multimedia titles, enjoying strong readership and respect levels all around the globe. It has embraced the digital age with zeal and is synonymous with innovative, immediate and highly visual coverage of major industry developments. In 2017, Martin Moodie received the Frontier Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Industry.