ACTE Press Release

Immediate Release!

ACTE Distinguished Fellow Award

(Alexandria, Va., USA, January 4, 2001)--The Association of Corporate Executives (ACTE) announced today the first recipients of the ACTE Distinguished Fellow award. They are Albert Kilsdonk of Royal Dutch Shell, Mariette de Meij, Lucent Technologies, Tim de Nordwall, ITM, and Yosine Westerop, ABN AMRO NV. The award was established in 2000 to recognize excellence in business travel industry education. The winners were determined through session evaluations submitted by attendees to the ACTE Global 2000 conference in Amsterdam, October 22-24. Greeley Koch, ACTE's vice president of Education remarked, "These winners represent a blended approach to industry education--peer to peer learning combined with professional expertise--resulting in a very effective session that imparted shared learning experiences backed by professional research." The winners developed a two part session for the ACTE Global 2000 Conference in Amsterdam entitled Doing Business Globally, which investigated cross-cultural issues affecting areas such as technology usage, purchasing habits and external communications.

Marilyn Clifton, Corporate Travel Manager EMEA for Oracle Corporation said, "In my opinion it was a very useful session which enabled all the participants to begin to understand the cultural differences and political issues which make up the global market place. "

ACTE president, Ron Wagner added, "What makes this award so impressive is that the presenters of this session volunteered their time and energy to fashion an outstanding presentation. This reaffirms a fundamental characteristic about ACTE--that the heart of ACTE is reflected in the energy and spirit of its volunteers."

In the future the ACTE Distinguished Fellow award will be conferred upon the presenters of the highest rated education session following each of ACTE's two annual global conferences. ACTE's next global conference will be held in Tampa, Florida, April 22-24, 2001 followed in Munich, Germany, October 28-30, 2001.

Founded in 1988, the Association of Corporate Travel Executives is the only organization wholly dedicated to the science of business travel management with an international constituency. ACTE membership totals more than 2,400, including entities in Asia/Pacific, Europe, Canada, South Africa and the United States. The organization is headquartered in Alexandria, Va., and its web site is www.acte.org.