Our MD wins ITM Tech Innovator of the Year: Grace Louisy on AI, "failing fast," and the compliance gap nobody talks about

Grace Louisy, our Managing Director, has won the Tech Innovator Individual Award at the ITM Achievement Awards 2026. It recognizes the work she's led at HeadBox turning meetings and events from an industry afterthought into something travel managers can actually see, measure and control — from Insights, our unified spend dashboard, to AI-powered venue shortlisting and HeadBox Zero's carbon reporting. It lands at a good moment too, with HeadBox expanding fast across North America and APAC and a new booker experience in the works. 

We caught up with Grace for a quick Q&A on the win, the thinking behind it, and where she'd go if her calendar ever cleared.

Congratulations! What does the win mean to you?

It means a lot. The ITM community is packed with people doing genuinely innovative work, so recognition from that crowd carries weight. Meetings and events have always been travel's smaller sibling, so seeing ITM put the category front and center feels like a shift worth celebrating in itself.

What’s the biggest problem you’re solving right now?

Meetings and events have lagged behind the rest of travel in tech advancements for years, and that gap's only widened now that 91% of travel managers have inherited responsibility for them. The issues are the same everywhere: no visibility into spend, manual processes, tools that weren't built for this category. I call it the "compliance gap" — travel programs are mature, but meetings and events still sit in a gray area of scattered ownership and messy data. The question driving our roadmap was simple: how do we give travel managers what they need to manage this spend, not just absorb it?

How do you find the right things to build in such a fast-moving industry?

With the rate and scale of AI application right now, it's easy to fall into the trap of building AI tools for the sake of it. We're AI-smart, not AI-first. 

Curiosity is a core value.  I use the product myself, and spend real time watching customers use it too – that’s the clearest signal of where the friction actually is. Cross-team collaboration is key – our brilliant Product & Tech team takes so much time to prioritize the customer experience when building and updating our products. We run on "fail fast": if something doesn't land, we rebuild it rather than defend it. 

What AI trend are you most excited about?

Personalization, and how far it can stretch across the full event lifecycle — matchmaking, tailored itineraries, the admin nobody enjoys. Our AI-powered venue shortlisting already turns hours of searching into minutes and drafts bespoke proposals automatically, while giving customers sharper visibility into untracked spend. Contracts and policies are next.

What's been the harder sell — the tech, or getting the industry to change how it works?

The latter, for sure. I've spent time interviewing global travel leads at organizations like Microsoft, KLA and Fidelity to turn scattered frustration into a shared problem statement, and I run HeadBox's quarterly Product Advisory Board so travel managers help shape the tools before they ship. Our close relationships with business customers really help us get valuable feedback. It’s important to build something people want to use because it saves them time, not something they're forced into. 

What’s happening at HeadBox that you’re extra excited about?

Oh, a lot of things – 2026 is a pivotal year for us. We're launching in 100 global cities, and taking everything we've learned solving the Compliance Gap in the UK to markets that are wrestling with exactly the same problem. The first step? A booth at Business Travel Show America in October. We can’t wait. 

There's also a brand new platform for event planners coming that I can't say too much about yet, but it’s going to be a game-changer for our business customers. Keep an eye out for that. 

Last one — no limits on time or budget, where are you going?

Dominica. It's where my grandparents were born before moving to the UK as part of the Windrush generation, and it’s one of the best-kept secrets of the Caribbean. 

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