Tripadvisor Company Overview

Steve co-founded TripAdvisor in 2000 with the mission to help travelers around the world plan and have the perfect trip. Under his leadership, TripAdvisor has grown into the largest Web 2.0 company in the northeast and the largest travel site in the world. Steve now leads TripAdvisor, Inc., which includes 20 travel brands. Prior to co-founding TripAdvisor, Steve was president of CDS, Inc., an independent software vendor, and prior to that, was co-founder and vice president of engineering of CenterLine Software. The winner of the 2005 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Steve holds several software patents and has spoken at dozens of travel and high-tech conferences worldwide. Steve is on the board of directors at Glassdoor (www.glassdoor.com); CarGurus (www.cargurus.com); and the Caring For Carcinoid Foundation (www.caringforcarcinoid.org). He's a fan of his brother-in-law's robot sculptures at Lipson Robotics (www.lipsonrobotics.com). Steve has a degree in computer science from Harvard University.

Steve's favorite travel destination is Jerusalem, Israel.

Seth Kalvert has responsibility for all of the legal activities of TripAdvisor, Inc. Prior to assuming his role as General Counsel in August 2011, Seth held various positions at Expedia, Inc., most recently as Vice President, Associate General Counsel since February 2006, where he had primary responsibility for the legal aspects of the company's mergers and acquisitions and other transactional work, along with the global Expedia brand, and managed a team that provided legal support for various Expedia brands, including TripAdvisor and Hotwire, in addition to privacy and trademarks across Expedia, Inc. Before joining Expedia, Seth held various legal positions at IAC/InterActiveCorp, which he joined in July 2001. Previously, Seth held a business development role at a privately-held online social networking and e-commerce company and practiced law in the New York office of Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP. Seth holds an AB from Brown University and a JD from Columbia Law School.

Seth's favorite travel destination is Queenstown, New Zealand.

As chief growth officer, Gary is responsible for growing and leading strategy across the entire family of TripAdvisor brands. In his dual role as president of APAC, he leads TripAdvisor’s operations and strategy throughout the Asia Pacific region. Before joining TripAdvisor, Gary founded the advisory and investment group Amanogawa, LLC, where he advised the leadership of several multi-national companies on global strategy and expansion plans. Gary’s relationship with TripAdvisor spans more than a decade. He held a variety of senior executive roles at Expedia, Inc. from 2003-2012 when TripAdvisor was part of Expedia. From 2008 to 2012, Gary served as president, Partner Services Group for Expedia, where he led Expedia’s commercial activity and strategy on a global basis. Gary oversaw the sales, technology and operations teams on a global basis. Prior to Expedia, Gary worked with the global consultancy McKinsey & Company for 3 years focused on telecom and distressed debt practices. Gary currently serves on the board of advisors for Button, Darkstore and Kwibon, as well as Chairing the University of Washington’s campaign for inclusive education. Gary holds a Master’s degree from MIT and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania.

Gary's favorite travel destination is Tokyo.

Beth is responsible for leading TripAdvisor's global human resources organization. Previously, Beth was at Nuance Communications, a global provider of speech and imaging solutions, where she served as the senior vice president of human resources. Prior to Nuance, Grous spent three years at Sanofi Corporation, a global healthcare organization, where she was the vice president of human resources. Beth also held a number of roles at Genzyme Corporation for nine years, including vice president of human resources, before it was acquired by Sanofi. Earlier on, Grous held human resources leadership positions at Perot Systems Healthcare Services, Reebok International, Aramark Educational Services and Federated Department Stores. Grous holds a bachelor's degree in English from Cornell University.

Beth's favorite travel destination is Maui, Hawaii.

Dermot Halpin leads the attractions and vacation rentals businesses at TripAdvisor, which includes leadership of Viator, FlipKey, Holiday Lettings, Niumba, Vacation Home Rentals and HouseTrip.  Dermot has extensive experience in building high-growth consumer internet platforms, through organic growth and acquisition, particularly in the travel space.  Prior to joining TripAdvisor in 2012, Dermot was president of Expedia EMEA, where he oversaw the expansion of Expedia, Hotels.com, and the Expedia affiliate network in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.  In addition to Expedia, Dermot was previously CEO at Autoquake and Managing Director at Tele2.  He was on the board of Voyages SNCF, ELong, and is now on the board of Ding.com.  Dermot holds an MBA from INSEAD and studied engineering at University College Dublin, Ireland.

Dermot's favorite travel destination is Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Bertrand Jelensperger is responsible for the strategy and operations of TripAdvisor’s restaurant business as well as serves as CEO of lafourchette. In 2007, Bertrand co-founded lafourchette, an online restaurant booking platform that has a network of more than 34,000 restaurant partners across Europe and is now the leading online and mobile reservation platform for restaurants in France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Brazil, Portugal, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Australia. In 2014, lafourchette was acquired by TripAdvisor, which now allows users to search availability and reserve a table for a specific date and time directly from TripAdvisor. Prior to lafourchette, Bertrand co-founded Boursipoly, an online gaming company and led the team at JTECH, a paging system for the hospitality industry in France and Spain. He currently serves on the board of Doctolib (www.doctolib.fr). Bertrand earned his degree at the HEC business school in Paris.

Bryan Saltzburg leads the company's global Flights product that now operates in over 44 countries and 26 languages. In addition to TripAdvisor's flights metasearch, Bryan also oversees both the SeatGuru and GateGuru brands, the savvy traveler's go-to sites for in-depth airport, aircraft amenity and flight information. During his eight years at TripAdvisor, he also led the New Initiatives group that oversaw the launch, growth and development of both the Flight and Vacation Rentals categories. Prior to joining TripAdvisor, Bryan worked for Travelocity, most recently serving as vice president of leisure businesses. Over his eight years there, he was responsible for launching their cruise business, and managing its dynamic packaging, activities and events, and insurance businesses. Bryan previously held marketing and business development positions at Walt Disney Company, Neutrogena, and Princess Cruises. He holds a BS in education and social policy from Northwestern University and an MBA from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.

Bryan's favorite travel destination is Ko Phi Phi, Thailand.

Bryan's favorite travel destination is Ko Phi Phi, Thailand.

Nick co-founded TripAdvisor in 2000 with Stephen Kaufer and today is responsible for leading TripAdvisor’s engineering organization worldwide. During the early days at TripAdvisor, Nick co-wrote the original platform that powered the site, built a first-class engineering team and led the development of the site design and architecture. In 2007, Nick joined CarGurus where he led engineering. Two years later, Nick returned to the TripAdvisor family working at SmarterTravel Media Group, where he grew the engineering organization and helped build several e-commerce platforms, including Tingo and SniqueAway. From there, Nick returned to TripAdvisor to lead the Vacation Rental engineering teams. Before launching TripAdvisor, Nick worked at Microsoft in their R&D organization and CenterLine Software where he met Kaufer. Nick studied Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Nick's favorite travel destination is Grand Cayman Island.