About Us

The TRA is the community and professional home of Travel Risk and Travel Optimisation Management.

Why the Travel Risk Academy?

For most organisations travel programmes are measured by savings and managed by procurement or finance. Whilst these are important factors, there are many more stakeholders involved in TOM. At the TRA, we have a unique opportunity to bring different stakeholders together, hold meaningful discussion and take action. If Travel Optimisation is about viewing your programme holistically, then see the TRA as the holistic view of the travel, security and assistance industries; bringing you access to a centre of excellence where you can collaborate, learn, thrive and progress your career.

Join Our Community

If we are going to make meaningful change happen, we have to come together; travellers, programme owners, organisations and service providers across travel, assistance, security, insurance and technology. If you want to be part of the growing movement that the TRA is creating, join our community today; you are most welcome.

Bex Deadman

Co-Founder

What is the TRA?

The TRA is the community that brings the topic of travel risk to life and optimises travel management.

Travel Risk Management is a diverse subject, covering a whole range of topics that involve many areas within a business. Whilst many organisations have established business processes in place for some aspects of travel risk management, this is often inconsistent across all areas of the business and effective training and communication in particular are areas that in nearly all cases require more clearly defined strategies and ongoing attention.

The Travel Risk Academy has been set up to address this requirement and to provide a place where people and organisations can develop their understanding of how to proactively manage the risks inherent in their travel programmes.

If the last few years have shown us anything, it’s that anything can happen, to anyone, at any time. Travel Risk is not new, in fact travelling on business is one of the times that individual employees are most vulnerable while working, and when the organisation itself is exposed to additional risk. However, the identification, management and education of risk, until now, has typically been the responsibility of a few people within a business. Ultimately, if a risk strategy is going to work, everyone in the organisation needs to know about it, to understand their responsibilities and ultimately to know what to do if a situation occurs.

Adopting an inclusive approach the TRA is helping to evolve Travel Risk Management (TRM) into Travel Optimisation Management (TOM). Travel Optimisation is about recognising that managing travel risk requires an holistic approach, it’s about understanding the WHY, HOW, WHAT, WHO and the WHERE and WHEN.

Involving stakeholders across the organisation and your external peers will give you a 360-degree view of your programme; collaborating with us will not only teach you some tricks of the trade – we’ll also help you get meaningful results.

ISO Standards

The introduction of ISO31000:2018 (Risk Management) and more recently ISO31030:2021 (Travel Risk Management for Guidance for Organisations) suggests that businesses take a different approach to managing risk; that there is no quick solution or single way to do something.

Instead it’s about the identification and consideration of the potential risks to your travellers and your organisation and your proposed ways of mitigating them – you make the decisions for your business based on your own risk appetite; we’re here to help you understand how to do that and to help you put in place innovative solutions that suport your entire workforce.

Why we are Needed

Travel management has never really had a permanent home. It normally sits somewhere between procurement and finance for most organisations and risk and security functions, if in existence at all, are generally not involved in “travel management”. And there are two other areas of a business that use travel services heavily, these are Global Mobility and Meetings & Events. All have a tendency to work seperately with their own policies and solutions. Wherever it sits in an organisation, over the years the role of the travel programme manager has evolved, and there is now a new expectation, especially after the global pandemic, that their knowledge far exceeds what it was before; but the travel industry is complicated and unwieldy and risk management is a brand-new skill set. The TRA is here to help support and upskill our workforces in the discipline of TRM.

Travel risks can negatively affect individuals and organisations physically, financially, operationally and reputationally, therefore, the management of travel risk needs to be effective and to become a recognised discipline within organisations. If we are going to get this right and run safe, sustainable travel programmes there is a lot of educating to do, across all of your workforce. We have created the Travel Risk Academy to ensure that your people, at all levels, have a place to learn new skills and gain new qualifications that will ultimately keep them and your organisation safer.

How it Works

The Travel Risk Academy is more than just a learning platform. It is a community that shares knowledge and views about travel risk and travel optimisation management. It is important to us that the content we produce for you is not only thought provoking and practical, but that it also gives you what you need, as you need it. In addition to our learning platform and website, we have LinkedIn Travel Risk Academy Community pages and we actively encourage you to talk to other members. We’re all in this together to learn and shape the future.

To get the most out of the Travel Risk Academy we recommend becoming a member, you can find out more about this on our Membership page.

Join the conversation on LinkedIn

Educate

We provide extensive courses across the discipline of Travel Risk Management. Delivered both online, hybrid and in person, our courses are designed to complement your learning style and to provide you with practical takeaways which you can bring into your working (and personal) life.

Inspire

We believe in working together to evolve the discipline of TRM. Aided by your TRA Ambassadors and Mentors, we host events and workshops with a difference. Our goal is to bring the importance of TRM to life for you and your organisation, and to facilitate collaboration and positive change

Qualify

We have created ATHE Level 4 and Level 5 qualifications in Travel Risk Management, designed as a gateway into these roles and to professionalise the industry in which we all serve. ATHE is the certification body for our qualifications.

Our Co-founders

Honesty, Integrity, Excellence

Aligned with a clear vision to unite the sectors of Travel, Security and Risk Management and raise the standard of travel safety for all.

Risk & Standards

Sara McKenna

Sara has been active in the fields of Risk, Continuity and Resilience Management for over two decades, and brings a unique perspective, having worked closely on the development of many national and international standards related to the industry.

Sara works with both the Continuity Forum and the Cyber Risk & Insurance Forum, establishing and guiding programmes to ensure that good practice and constant improvement is achievable and provable.

Sara works closely with Russell Price, Chair of the Continuity Forum and Cyber Risk & Insurance Forum, assisting with advice and guidance to governments, regulators, and standards bodies across the globe and businesses on the management of risk.

Security & Assistance

Simon Crane

Simon has gained extensive experience in the commercial sector, operating at director level within companies involved in security and risk management across the hospitality & travel sectors, as well as leading an international security sector reform project in Libya.

He was also involved in the development of ISO31030:2021 Travel Risk Management Guidance for Organisations and in 2021 designed and achieved accreditation for the only Level 4 and Level 5 Travel Risk Management qualifications on the OFQUAL Register of Qualifications, which will start to be delivered this year.

Simon is an active member of the Institute of Strategic Risk Management and is a Board member of the Association of Security Consultants, responsible for developing the Association’s global presence.

Travel Management

Bex Deadman

Bex’s interest in travel risk management (TRM) came to the fore in 2019 when she was involved in the final stages of the development of ISO31030:2021 Travel Risk Management Guidance for Organisations; she now actively evangelises about the standard and is co-opted with the British Standards Institute (BSI) and is an ISO Convenor working on the evolution of standards in this area.

Her clients include both large domestic and global organisations, as well as TMCs and other travel service providers, all wishing to understand more about TRM and how to align their businesses to ISO31030.

Bex regularly hosts webinars and speaks at events about TRM (and other subjects) and hosts her own Podcast series, ‘Talk’n’ TRM, and Talk’n’TRM – The Traveller Files; where she creates space for the diversity of TRM to be discussed by herself, subject matter experts and most importantly the travellers themselves.