Deeply Involved Management

Ray Vastola, President, and Ira Malin, Vice President, founded Travel Planners in 1980 after obtaining MBA degrees from Harvard Business School. They are active in day-to-day operations of the company. Both are accessible to you, and they handpick the professionals who will be on your team.

Lisa Baez, Director of Strategy & Operations, optimizes Travel Planners performance by leading and managing development and execution of the Company initiatives across all departments to insure outstanding service delivery to clients. Prior to joining Travel Planners in 1992, she worked in Hilton sales/convention service and as a meeting planner.

Becky Hansen, Director of IT / Client Implementation, was the first hire at Travel Planners in 1982 and knows our hardware and software systems from the bottom up.

Louise Alvarado, Director of Program Operations, came to Travel Planners from her role as Director of Revenue Management at New York’s St. Regis Hotel. Her career has included 10 years of management with the Starwood and Millennium hotel chains.

Richard Albrecht, Director of Program Development, joined Travel Planners in 2000 as a Program Executive. His career spans from education to hospitality, where he held sales positions with the InterContinental and Wyndham hotel groups.

Desiree Crichlow, Director of Housing Reservations, oversees call center staff and the operational teams that insure the integrity of room blocks. Des joined Travel Planners as a reservation agent in 1994.

Brian Hendricks, Director of Online Marketing, will review your marketing plan and then outline a complete marketing program for the housing portion of your event. His team of web developers, copywriters and graphic artists will then develop all custom content and elements needed. Since joining Travel Planners in 1999, Brian has been a Program Executive and a Product Development Executive for our sister company, Quikbook.com.