Peter Ahlström is an experienced leader with an extensive background in the travel and airline industry and crisis management. He is an operations, communications and security specialist.
He started his working career on the Cruise ships between Finland and Sweden and went on to study political science and international relations. His next step was to join the flying crowd, where he worked in several airlines based in Denmark, Finland, USA and Germany to finally land in Sweden.
His career in crisis management began when he became the Head of Ground Handling in the airline TUIfly Nordic, one of six airlines part of the TUI Airlines Group in Europe, the largest leisure company in the world. He was part of the management team for 19 years and the role included the task as Emergency Manager and Crisis Manager for the airline, in close cooperation with the nordic tour operator TUI and all the TUI companies worldwide. The role included building manuals, doing training, exercises and managing the daily global operation of the airline for many years. The incidents handled were the tsunami disaster in Thailand and the ash cloud challenge in Iceland/Europe, to mention a couple.
His next step was to head the Emergency Response of the largest Scandinavian Airline SAS. The role contained all aspects of crisis management – procedures, training , exercises and continuous contact with all levels of the company. Peter was a significant provider of the plans for SAS handling the pandemic crisis.
He has been part of crisis training, both attending and lecturing in several conutries. Airline and travel is the background, but the experience can be of use in any crisis where strategic support and the humanitarian aspect needs to be achieved.

Peter is of Finnish origin and speaks Finnish, Swedish, Danish, English and German.

Wilfred has 20 years’ airport operations experience. He has serviced flagship carriers such as British Airways, Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Turkish Airlines, Egypt Air, FlyBe and Malaysian Airlines. His ground handling experience over the years included roles as station head, load controller, turnaround coordinator and flight manager.

Wilfred was Station Head for Malaysia Airlines during the MH17 tragedy where he supported the airline’s response in Amsterdam as the Airport Crisis Centre Coordinator, field manager and logistics manager.

Tom has a reputation as a successful and versatile airline operations professional, with more than 16 years’ increasingly senior experience in front line, operational leadership, corporate resilience, business continuity and crisis management roles at Virgin Atlantic in London and Virgin Australia in Sydney, as well as the utilities industry.

An accomplished corporate crisis leader, Tom held the role of Crisis Management Centre Commander (‘Silver Commander’) and played a pivotal role in his airline’s response to incidents including the aftermath of a category five hurricane, internal and third-party industrial action, the prolonged closure of a major hub airport and the collapse of an affiliated business. He represented his airline at the UK Civil Aviation Authority command centre during the delivery stage of ‘Project Matterhorn’; the largest ever peace-time repatriation of British citizens, following the collapse of a major British tour operator.

More recently, Tom led the airline’s crisis team through the outbreak of Covid-19, balancing a complex operational environment with rapidly changing global health requirements and implementing proportionate consumer and staff confidence measures in order to continue essential flight operations.

Tom takes a global view of airline emergency response, having held a coveted position on the organising committee of the IATA Airline Emergency Response Forum, through which in 2019, in Montreal, he shared best practice response to handling to two simultaneous crisis incidents with ERP practitioners and industry experts assembled from more than eighty major international airlines. He was a member of the United Kingdom Airline Emergency Planning Group, custodian of the emergency response manual at Virgin Atlantic and responsible for continuous improvement and training delivery of the ‘in-house’ family assistance team.

Tom is an avid traveller, holds a Private Pilot’s Licence, and is based in London.

Rod Cartwright is a strategic communication advisor, who works with in-house teams, agencies and senior leaders to deliver personal communication preparedness and organisational resilience.

He specialises in issues management & crisis communication; leadership communication & executive preparedness; thought leadership & corporate reputation; and strategic problem-solving & facilitation. He has steered world leaders including IATA, Nissan, IBM, Bridgestone, Toyota, KFC, Dell, Accenture, DHL, Western Union, Kempinski Hotels, Qatar Foundation and Transport for London.

Rod brings a 25-year global PR agency pedigree, having held UK, European and global leadership positions in several top-10 communication firms. He has provided issues & crisis counsel and executive communication coaching to leaders across aviation & transportation, leisure & entertainment, extractive industries, food & beverage, healthcare & wellbeing, consumer electronics, and professional & business services, among many sectors.

His experience includes being a key part of the three-person team advising the Chairman, CEO, legal counsel and Emergency Operations Centre team of Malaysia Airlines in the months following the disappearance of Flight MH370 and on the subsequent restructuring of the airline.

Parul is the Senior Associate in South Asia for GoCrisis. Parul Ghosh is a development professional based in Mumbai, India who has worked on issues like Disability Rights, Gender-based violence in India and Youth empowerment. Through her work, especially in the space of disability rights, policy and accessibility, she has implemented projects globally and worked towards setting up of local networks in Africa, Arab Region and the Commonwealth of Independent States, while liaising with global agencies such as the United Nations (DESA), Bank Information Centre, World Health Organisation, among many others. Parul has also worked extensively in India towards access, legislation and policies.

Lawrence McDonnell is based in the United Kingdom and is a Public Relations and Communications expert who provides a strong focus on consumer and corporate crisis communications. He is a former BBC correspondent and Bureau Chief in the region, with more than 20 years of experience working across Russian-speaking markets.

Lawrence’s experience includes first response and deployment to the scene of a major air crash in Russia with the loss of all passengers and crew. He subsequently worked with the airline in engaging with key stakeholders, including media, family representatives and government authorities. Other experience includes a response to a hostile takeover of the Russian business of a major US corporation and a response to a Russian shopping mall fire with multiple lives lost. He speaks English, Russian and French.

Bert “Bow-Thai” van Walbeek has 45 years’ experience in the Hotel and Tourism industry and has been a “Master of Disaster” in this space for 30 years and a University Lecturer for 20 years.

During his tenure as VP Marketing Middle East for ITT Sheraton, he had to face the crisis of the 1st Gulf War and developed the “Back to Normal” concepts for the Sheraton Hotels in the area and for the Egyptian General Authority for the Promotion of Tourism. During Thailand’s “Black May” crisis in May 1992, he was Chairman of the TAT Marketing Working Group for the 1992 Recovery Committee developed “The World, Our Guest” campaign.

Bert worked with PATA (Pacific Asia Travel Association) on Risk & Crisis Management publication “Expect the Unexpected” and developed PATA’s first educational & training module on that topic. He also co-authored with Dr. David Beirman the PATA publication “Bounce Back “.

Bert was part of the Bali Recovery Task Force and initiated with PATA the Tourism Crisis Recovery Communication Plan for Sichuan and Chengdu. He also worked with the Macau Government Tourism Office towards setting up a separate government entity called “Tourism Crisis Management Office”. Until recently, Bert was the Chairman of the PATA Rapid Recovery Taskforce where he developed the plans for proactive and reactive risk mitigation and crisis management advocacy, as well as for rapid recovery support. The task force’s efforts were tested during recent crises in India, Thailand, the Philippines, Guam and Fiji. Most recently, he was the Coordinator of the Nepal Tourism Rapid Recovery Task Force.

Having held the prestigious position of Vice President of Media Relations for Airbus, Barbara has exceptional experience in Media Relations, Communications and Crisis communications. Barbara built and led the Airbus Commercial Aircraft Media Relations department during most of her career, and then the Airbus Military Communications for four years prior to her retirement.

Barbara is a true leader in the PR and Communications world, having had to advise, manage, and master many types of crises, including multiple aircraft accidents. She has extensive experience and a vast knowledge of what is required by companies in terms of their public relations and communications post-accident. Barbara is based in Toulouse and speaks fluent English, French, German and Spanish.

Andrew began his career of over 35 years in crisis response operations and training with the British Army, specialising in; transportation, the movement of personnel and equipment around the world and Army landing craft.

On leaving the Army he initially worked on short term projects supporting young people, first in the voluntary sector on sail training ships, then with Aberdeen City Council Children’s Services. The partnership working on these projects led to a Scottish Government appointment within Grampian Police, coordinating all joint agency emergency response plans for the Grampian Police area, which included the North Sea and its oil and gas operations.

Andrew also helped to develop Scotland’s national resilience guidance, “Preparing Scotland”. A move into emergency response and crisis management consultancy saw Andrew delivering services mainly to the oil and gas sector worldwide, enabling him to spend three years in South East Asia as a senior consultant.

On returning to the UK, Andrew moved back to the wider transport sector, becoming Head of Crisis Management for the world’s biggest travel company, TUI. Having successfully completed crisis management and incident response improvement projects involving TUI UK’s cruise ships, airline, tour operations and internal business continuity,

Andrew decided it was time for the next big challenge and established his own consultancy company. He has been delighted to find so many likeminded people within the GoCrisis family and thoroughly enjoys working with them on projects. When he’s not doing work for GoCrisis, Andrew currently lectures on Emergency & Crisis Management to students from Qatar’s emergency services.

Dave is a specialist in Emergency and Crisis Management, Incident Command, Crisis Training, and Business Continuity Planning. Having served over 31 years in the UK Fire and Rescue Service, retiring as an Assistant Chief Fire Officer in October 2014, Dave has extensive skills, knowledge, and experience in many different roles as a professional fire practitioner, senior commander and search and recovery specialist.

During his career, Dave served in many different roles, including Operations, Emergency Response Support, Training, Community and Fire Safety and the Emergency Fire Control Room.

Dave served as a Senior and Principal Officer operating at Tactical (Silver) and Strategic (Gold) levels for over 10 years, in both day-to-day management of the Service as well as operationally at multiple types of emergency incidents. These roles included command of the Operational Response Function for the Service with responsibility for all the Emergency Fire Stations in the County and the Emergency Fire Control Call Handling Centre with over 500 operational personnel, equipment, and assets. In 2010 he was seconded to undertake a project to introduce Civil Resilience Planning and a Fire Special Operations Team into the Service, capable of operating alongside the Police and other first responders, following the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist attacks.

Dave has deployed around the world to multiple mass fatality incidents, including air crashes, natural disasters, large building fires, and building collapses. Dave has led large teams as an Incident Director and Team Leader, managing search and recovery, logistics, family and government liaison, personal effects, and family assistance.

Dave is a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management and has attended the Warwickshire University Executive Leadership and Gold Commander Programme.