Team

Great Advice Has No Border

Our global team ensures that your opportunities never get lost in translation.

Areka’s services are delivered by 40 renowned advisors, working from a network of ten metropolitan hubs on three continents. We have the reach, the perspective and connections of a global advisory with the focus and agility of a boutique firm.

Leadership

Pascal Jungfer

Chief Executive
& Founding Partner

Paris, France

Aurelie Duprez

Founding Partner

Paris, France

Mike Mannix

Founding Partner

Sydney, Australia

Jean-Michel Kadaner

Partner

Trier, Germany

Wendy Prewitt

Lead Consultant,
Head of North America

Miami, U.S.A.

Kate Watson

Head of Consulting,
UK & Nordics

London, United Kingdom

Tiphaine Grenot

Manager, Europe

Paris, France

Tauseef Hussain

Director, Data Science and
Information Technology

Paris, France

Charlie Bacharach

Senior Vice President of North America

New York, U.S.A.

Martina Eggler

Senior Vice President

Dusseldorf, Germany

Pascal Jungfer, Chief Executive & Founding Partner

Pascal Jungfer attracts clients and talented consultants who share both his energy and passion for blazing the new trails that spark innovation. His lifelong drive to push boundaries and his love for the dynamics of travel management gave rise to Areka, which he founded in 2011, along with three long-trusted partners. From the start, Pascal and his Areka partners set out to work with clients who were curious, imaginative and pioneering. Today, Pascal’s consultants are each a driving force in their respective markets, known for tackling complex challenges with global perspective.

Over the years, Pascal’s work has prompted him to live in France, Singapore and Gabon and to become fluent in French, English and Spanish. He spent more than a decade in management consulting with Accenture, Capgemini and Mars & Co before jumping into travel. In 2005, he joined CWT as Global Vice President of Consulting, where he launched the industry’s first consulting division for a world-leading travel management company and grew that team to exceed 100 worldwide consultants.

Aurelie Duprez , Founding Partner

Aurelie Duprez is one of Areka’s keystones – a Founding Partner who infuses Areka with the organizational foundation and infrastructure needed by her global team of talented consultants to realize exceptional results. She is Areka’s overseer of knowledge sharing and operational efficiency at the global level. Having created Areka’s first airline sourcing models and reporting suite, today Aurelie ensures her team is equipped with the analytics and resources required for world-class advisory. As a project lead and supervisor, she’s a precise and steady manager of challenging situations. With deep insight into data and an innate ability to untangle complexity, Aurelie is known for delivering new ideas and creative solutions – and can do that in French, German and English. 

Aurélie completed her secondary education at age 16 and promptly aced the entrance exam at ESSEC Business School, where she earned an MBA. A natural gift for numbers and a passion for cross-cultural projects then prompted her to jump into travel management consulting with CWT, where she specialized in airline sourcing for major global clients. In 2011, she launched Areka with three other partners. Since then, Aurelie has been relentlessly growing the firm and extending her influence within the industry. As a member of the GBTA France board of directors, she serves as an event contributor, speaker, facilitator, content creator, and mentor.

Aurelie enjoys hiking with her husband and three young children and visiting the museums, exhibitions and theatres that make Paris such an amazing hometown. She’s a home chef who loves to expand the family’s culinary horizons and an obsessive collector of far too many cookbooks.

Mike Mannix, Founding Partner

Mike Mannix is a Founding Partner of Areka and is based in Sydney, Australia. Starting with CWT nearly 25 years ago, he launched and then led their hotel consulting business in Europe, before he was asked to return to Australia to launch the consulting and global airline practice in APAC. In 2011, Mike and his fellow partners launched Areka Consulting.

Mike is distinguished by his drive to innovate, inspiring his clients and colleagues alike to explore new solutions. Having worked with many of the world’s largest and leading companies, he brings a deep understanding of the global TMC, aviation, technology, and hotel marketplace to each client. Mike has worked in over 40 countries and understands what it takes to join together global strategies and local needs. He possesses an unrivalled knowledge of the APAC travel industry, which he generously shares in his work mentoring young consultants.

Fluent in English and French, Mike has travelled to more than 80 countries. His love of learning about different cultures filled him with a drive to travel at an early age, prompting his first solo trip at the age of 15. From there, it was inevitable… there would only ever be one industry for him. Today when he travels for personal reasons, he is inclined to head off the beaten track, favoring more remote outposts and much preferring a tent to a 5-star hotel.

Jean-Michel Kadaner, Partner

Jean-Michel Kadaner is an Associate Partner and one of Areka’s resident gurus in the travel supply chain, supplier relationship optimization and technology outsourcing. For nearly 30 years, he has helped his clients navigate the changes and challenges in travel technology, payment systems, sourcing, and project management.

Born in Belgium and now living in Germany, Jean-Michel has lived in many countries and is fluent in English, French and German. He studied Law at the University of Brussels and earned his Master’s in Purchasing Management from the UFCIA in Antwerp. He built procurement expertise in some of the largest telecommunications companies in the world, including ITT, Alcatel and Alcatel Alstom and then ran his own consulting firm for 18 years before joining Areka in 2015.

Beyond the work he does for Areka clients, Jean-Michel loves to build up young talent. He’s a frequent speaker at travel industry events and procurement conferences, as well as an Advisory Council Member for Create Talent. He was a part-time professor at the European Institute of Purchasing Management in Geneva, and served as seminar leader at HEC Paris, one of Europe’s oldest business schools.

Jean-Michel’s pursuits extend well beyond travel. He’s a bona-fide “Petrolhead” having a passion for anything that rides, flies or sails. Lately, he been especially enamored with bikes and old Jaguars. He is a rock drummer, an amateur jazz pianist, and as of late, a saxophone rookie. His favorite getaway? Stealing time with his four kids and five beloved grandkids.

Wendy Prewitt, Lead Consultant; Head of North America

Wendy Prewitt is a powerful business driver whose entrepreneurial instincts and client focus have prompted rapid growth in numerous travel industry roles. In each position, she has driven innovation, opened new markets and positioned her stakeholders for market dominance.

Her industry accomplishments could fill a page. Wendy launched her travel career with Rosenbluth International, opening their first London operation and serving as Rosenbluth’s Managing Director for EMEA. At American Express she moved into payment systems, where her team managed over $24B in charge volume. At BCD Travel, Wendy launched the agency’s first end-to-end consulting business focused on program design, technology strategy and process. And over the years, Wendy has served as partner, first for TCG Consulting and then for Bid Logic Solutions, a woman-owned business offering software applications for TMC sourcing. In 2021, Wendy joined Areka, and today serves as our Lead Consultant in North America.

Kate Watson, Head of Consulting, UK & Nordics

Kate Watson has dedicated her career to advancing the practice of travel management. Now serving as the Practice Lead for Areka Consulting in the U.K., Kate’s thought leadership and expertise have enabled her clients to revolutionize their programs with state-of-the-art approaches in procurement strategy, sourcing, change management, project management and governance.

Over the past 20 years, Kate has cemented her expertise with roles in the hotel sector, global distribution, a global TMC and travel technology. During her tenure with Credit Suisse, she rose to the role of VP, Global Commodities Manager for Travel where she was the global owner of supplier management, procurement and program implementation across all travel categories.

Since 2016, Kate has established Areka as an industry Leader in the UK and Nordics. She’s a trusted lead consultant for some of the most influential and advanced clients in many categories, including banking, technology and consumer goods.

Tiphaine Grenot, Manager Europe

For Tiphaine Grenot travel can be a transformative experience that no one should miss.  For her corporate travel clients, she knows that a well-designed travel program is more than a business imperative that promotes savings and efficiency.  It is also a cultural pillar this is inextricably linked to employee wellbeing.

With a Master’s degree in international marketing and management, Tiphaine first entered the travel industry as an implementation manager for CWT, overseeing on- and off-line implementations for the firm’s multinational clients.  There she gained expertise in travel operations and project engineering.  She then focused on account management, working as a regional manager before taking on the outsourced global travel manager role at L’Oreal.  In 2016, Tiphaine moved to Shanghai to oversee audit across the APAC region before returning to France to manage a global key accounts portfolio.

In 2021, Tiphaine joined Areka, where she designs program strategies and oversees the delivery of market-leading solutions for a broad array of challenging global clients.  She credits the firm’s global perspective, innovative solutions and her colleagues’ openness to willingly share expertise with making the decision to move simple.

Since childhood, Tiphaine’s love of travel and experiencing the world outsider her window have shaped her future.  She’s already passing that flame on to her young son and daughter.  Today, when she is not working, she continues to travel – and to dream up new adventures for her own next generation of travelers.

Tauseef Hussain, Director, Data Science and Information Technology

Tauseef Hussain is Areka’s irrepressible chief data wizard. He has a passion transforming dirty data into enlightening insights that hold the answers to complex questions. Tauseef and his team manage Areka’s IT and digital transformation projects. Their superpower is the successful transformation of laborious manual analytical models into elegant visualizations and real-time intelligence.

Tauseef first joined Areka Consulting in 2016 after earning his Bachelor’s degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University and his Masters in Information Systems from EPITA: Ecole d’Ingénieurs en Informatique. Following IT Analyst and project management roles at Accenture, Like International and AQOA, Tauseef joined Areka, where he rose from Consultant to Data Solutions Manager and then the Director of Data Science and Information Technology. Today, he oversees everything from data modelling and governance to machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Tauseef is one of those rare few whose professional career involves their personal passion. He has an incredible love for airlines and aviation in general. He is an “AvGeek” who can see a plane flying in the sky and name the exact make, model, and the company of the plane. He loves everything that is technology and sports. His free time is mostly spent on reading up on latest tech trends, understanding financial markets or watching live sports, including football, tennis and Formula 1.

Charlie Bacharach, Senior Vice President of North America

Charlie Bacharach is Senior Vice President of North America, for Areka, based in New York. He has spent the last 20 years helping clients to advance their corporate travel programs by introducing new technologies, implementing innovative practices, and aligning mobility solutions to the needs of corporations and other organizations. His expertise extends to program design, booking tools and travel technology, supplier management and sourcing, as well as project management and change management.

Charlie has an established record of rapidly growing and scaling businesses in the travel sector, while delivering world-class services and project execution to his global clientele. Having held executive leadership positions with Orbitz for Business, Travel Leaders Corporate and Egencia, he has helped hundreds of companies transform their management of corporate travel spend, from first-time program implementations to global standardization of processes and procedures.

When he is not helping clients solve their travel management challenges, Charlie practices yoga and martial arts. He also enjoys golf, cooking and following New York-based sports teams. Though his wife and two children are pressing him to modernize his playlist, Charlie continues to be a die-hard fan of the Allman Brothers, Steely Dan, and the Rolling Stones.

Martina Eggler, Vice President DACH Region

Martina Eggler’s love of cross-cultural experiences has been an influential thread throughout her life. From her early schooling in Germany to high school in Canada and a study program in Tokyo, Martina’s path has been shaped by her love of diverse, multi-cultural environments.

It was only logical that she’d end up in travel—an industry she’s now served for more than 30 years. With a deep conviction that respect and shared values fuel successful collaboration, Martina has held an array of leadership positions, including Chief Marketing Officer at ATG Worldwide, General Manager for the DACH region at ATG, Vice President of Global Accounts and Partnerships at HRS, and Vice President of Strategic Accounts at CWT.

As Senior Vice President of Areka, Martina is leading the growth and development of the DACH region. Additionally, she will contribute to the company’s marketing and communications efforts, helping to showcase the firm’s capabilities.

After hours, Martina loves to cycle. She has crossed China and biked to Mongolia. Running is another passion, highlighted by her run in the New York Marathon. With inspiration from her children and two grandchildren, Martina Eggler is a constant source of positive energy to Areka, her colleagues and clients.