GE Vernova goes out to bid for a travel management company in the third quarter of this year but Bernadette Basterfield, the energy giant’s global sourcing executive for travel, meetings and fleet, has a problem. Basterfield is measured by her employer on supplier diversity, yet, she says, “I’ve been researching this and I can’t find a TMC that is female-owned, so I can’t say internally that we’re including such a company in our RFP process. Can I find one in the fleet world either? Hell, no!”
Many women work in corporate travel: 58 per cent of the buyer members of GBTA Europe are female. But perhaps this disguises an industry-wide appreciation that, says Basterfield, “very, very few companies in the business travel…