Brendan is an aviation veteran having working in the industry for over 30 years and is a native of Dublin Ireland. He is Vice President Talent Development for the past 18 months at Qatar Airways, the multi award winning airline based in Doha, Qatar. He manages the learning and development needs of over 43,000 staff worldwide at Qatar Airways (excluding Engineering, Cabin Crew & Flight Crew) and manages a team of 100 staff. Qatar Airways has recently partnered with IATA to become the first airline to launch RampVR, an amazing programme in Virtual Reality training. It puts participants into a real airport enviroment in a fully operational role. Previously, he was SVP of Group Learning & Development at Emirates Airline Group where he completed 24 years with Emirates based in Dubai. Prior to Emirates, Brendan was Section Head Customer Awareness Training for Gulf Air based in Bahrain and completed 10 years with Gulf Air. He has travelled extensively and has delivered service training programmes and strategy development programmes for many different airlines, hotels and banks worldwide. His career has spanned customer service, service auditing, airport handling, commercial operations and service recovery/enhancement and Crisis Management.
Brendan is a MBA Graduate of the Bradford School of Business UK, a member of the American Society for Training & Development. He was also a board member of the London Business School - Global Business Consortium for 7 years.
In 2011, he was requested by An Taoiseach (the Prime Minister of Ireland) to participate in a forum with a select group of key Irish business people from across the globe. The objective was to look at options that could help the country develop its GDP and assist the Irish Government in finding solution to its financial crisis. The Irish Government announced at the end of October 2012 that it has achieved all requirements of the IMF and is now a role model for other struggling economies in Europe. In 2013 Brendan was invited back for a 2nd forum and again in 2015 for a 3rd forum.