The corporate travel landscape is undergoing a significant phase of consolidation, driven by an escalating demand for specialized services that balance advanced digital integration with human expertise. In an official organizational update, Take2Eton Group, a prominent independent boutique travel management company operating across North America and Europe, announced two high-profile additions to its senior executive team. The structural alignment is designed to directly support the enterprise’s ongoing transatlantic expansion strategy and its major investments in artificial intelligence and corporate hospitality technology.
The specialized travel provider has officially promoted industry veteran Leann Forrest to the position of Global Head of Operations. Concurrently, the group has established a brand-new corporate vertical by appointing Kelly O’Sullivan as the Group Head of Technology. These strategic appointments come closely on the heels of another major leadership transition, following the formal designation of former long-serving Reed & Mackay executive Julie Oliver as the incoming Chief Executive Officer, a role she will officially assume on August 3, 2026, working alongside founder and chairman Chris Thelen.
Optimizing Transatlantic Operations for the Corporate Sector
The promotion of Leann Forrest to Global Head of Operations represents a direct effort by the firm to solidify its localized and cross-border fulfillment framework. Forrest brings three decades of specialized corporate travel management expertise to the expanded role. Her professional trajectory includes extensive senior operational tenures at prominent agencies, including Business Travel Direct, Chambers Travel Management, and the Eton Travel Group. Following the strategic acquisition of Eton by Take Two Travel Solutions in 2022—which culminated in a comprehensive corporate rebranding to Take2Eton Group in 2025—Forrest consistently moved upward through the entity’s management ranks.
In her expanded global capacity, Forrest assumes direct oversight of the group’s highly integrated transatlantic operations architecture. Her management mandate encompasses the coordination of specialized corporate travel consultants distributed across both the United Kingdom and the United States. Additionally, she will take charge of the company’s dedicated out-of-hours support mechanisms and its specialized, UK-based private leisure travel operations.
Official program statements from the group highlight that its consulting staff maintains an exceptional industry retention rate, with frontline corporate agents averaging 15 years of active market experience. Commenting on her appointment, Forrest emphasized that while ongoing artificial intelligence implementations are highly valuable for refining backend workflows, the firm’s core market differentiation remains centered on high-touch, executive-level human service.
Driving Next Generation AI and Business Intelligence Infrastructure
To complement its operational adjustments, the company has introduced a dedicated technology position to accelerate its digital engineering timeline. Kelly O’Sullivan joins the executive team in the newly established role of Group Head of Technology. O’Sullivan’s background spans more than 25 years of technical deployment, product support, and systems integration within the business travel arena. Most recently, she operated as the Global Product and Support Manager for Wings Travel Management. Her previous career history features seven years as the Head of Technical Operations for Business Travel Direct, followed by a senior tenure as Global Head of Product for Content and Consumer at Reed & Mackay.
At Take2Eton, O’Sullivan is tasked with directing the overarching IT infrastructure, business intelligence platforms, product engineering, and specialized software implementation teams. A primary element of her corporate directive includes overseeing the systematic embedding of machine learning models and AI-enabled diagnostic tools directly into the workflow setups utilized by frontline agents. O’Sullivan noted that the primary technical objective is to maintain an agile, highly innovative platform architecture that scales cleanly alongside changing client demands while reinforcing the group’s long-standing technical alliances, such as its certified partner status within the SAP Concur ecosystem.
Strategic Trajectory in the Global Travel Management Arena
The structural restructuring of the operations and technology verticals reflects a broader executive transition designed to posture the boutique provider against massive consolidation trends within the global travel management market. The departure of previous Chief Operating Officer Julie Cope, who helped guide the enterprise since its initial inception as a standalone startup in 2020, signals a clear pivot toward institutional scale. The incoming CEO, Julie Oliver, recently detailed that the firm’s immediate investment priorities will stay firmly anchored on scaling its premium corporate travel services, rapidly building out its international meetings and events division, and optimizing data analytics infrastructure.
According to statements from Chris Thelen, the additions of both Forrest and O’Sullivan arrive during an exceptionally strong period of growth for the independent travel management firm. Thelen stated that navigating a highly successful international growth path requires simultaneous, heavy capital commitments toward modern technological infrastructure and highly seasoned personnel. By locking in proven leadership to direct its operational corridors and digital workflows, the firm positions itself to capture expanding mid-market and enterprise accounts across the competitive North American and European corporate corridors.
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