Spotlight on Andrew Sheivachman: Catalyzing our organizational growth

As Spotnana began building a new modern infrastructure for travel, our Editorial Director Andrew Sheivachman embarked on a new career journey to help grow Spotnana.

Andrew, Spotnana’s first Marketing and U.S.-based hire, leads our content marketing efforts. He works with internal stakeholders and external partners to develop and execute content strategies that support Spotnana’s marketing efforts throughout the customer journey.

After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Andrew served in senior editorial roles at travel industry publication Skift and in a range of editorial positions at Travel Market Report and Questex Hospitality & Travel Group. He launched Skift’s Corporate Travel Innovation Report newsletter along with Skift’s coverage of the corporate travel space.

He followed these achievements with launching a Marketing team, a podcast, and more.

Examining the dated elements of travel tech and distribution

Andrew covered the travel industry for nearly a decade before joining Spotnana. During this time, it became clear that many different technology processes were in need of an overhaul.

Editorial Director Andrew Sheivachman

Andrew spoke with many leaders of travel management companies, booking tools, and startups to hear their perspectives on this issue, hoping to hear the news of fresh innovations providing a lasting fix.

“After covering corporate travel technology for years,” said Andrew, “I wanted to be a part of real change in the ecosystem.”

That’s when Andrew was pleasantly surprised by Sarosh Waghmar, who had a groundbreaking vision for a new startup called Spotnana. The two developed a friendship over many lunches and discussions of general industry buzz, the broken aspects of travel, and potential solutions to persisting challenges.

“Sarosh’s vision was exciting because he wanted to fix the plumbing,” said Andrew. “He always wanted to develop a solution that could help everyone in the industry win. The only way you do that is by changing the incentives, commercials, and technology that’s behind everything. From there, others can build better things on top of that foundation.”

Fueling Spotnana’s holistic development

In the early days of Spotnana, Andrew assumed a roving utility role in addition to his Marketing responsibilities. He eagerly contributed to company-wide initiatives like launching our website, building out our learning and development platform, crafting pitch decks for investors, and managing communications for internal, external, and partner audiences.

“One great thing from the beginning was our all-hands-on-deck attitude,” said Andrew. “When you’re that early in the life of the startup, it’s not that you have to do everything, but you have to help with everything. So that leads to really an intense feeling of ownership around making everything the best it can be.”

The company foundations that Andrew established in his utility role facilitated Spotnana’s organizational development, which in turn provided Andrew with various benefits.

“The great thing about the company growing has been being able to learn from many talented people on teams like Marketing, Product, and Customer Success,” said Andrew. “I appreciate the opportunity to learn best practices from all these people and contribute to what they do so that I can help them on their journey. I’m also learning how to ensure that we’re putting out the best messaging that we can about how we help our customers.”

Today, Andrew sees a ripe opportunity for prospective Spotters to learn new things, expand their careers, and meaningfully connect with coworkers when he reflects on Spotnana’s overall growth.

“To grow as Spotnana has grown has been an especially valuable experience,” said Andrew. “As the company continues to evolve, I know it will continue to be a wonderful place with good people who share great values.”

Creating a forum for the brightest minds in travel

Outside of the Spotnana blog, resource, and case study content that he creates, Andrew is constantly exploring new mediums for sharing how our open Travel-as-a-Service platform is creating opportunities for other travel and technology visionaries to build cutting-edge solutions and provide exceptional service to their customers.

“My goal with launching the Travel Is a Human Emotion podcast was to celebrate the ideas we believe in and showcase the forward-thinking leaders around the industry,” said Andrew. “It was exciting to feature what they are thinking about and what they are bringing to market to help the whole travel ecosystem.”

You can hear and learn from travel and tech leaders like Lufthansa Group’s Johannes Walter, Parexel’s Ben Park, Brex’s Karandeep Anand, SAS’ Richard Clowes, Solutions Travel’s Mark Walton, Center’s Naveen Singh, and Deciduous Consulting’s Claire Turner.

“We structured each episode as an interview exploring current themes, new technological innovations, and strategies for driving positive change,” said Andrew. “We really want to empower travel managers, suppliers, travel management companies, and technology providers to push our industry forward into the future.”

Ultimately, everyone in travel has a crucial role to play in driving the industry forward. The Spotnana Marketing team, with its roots in Andrew’s early foundational work, applies this idea to the work we do every day.

“At the heart of our team’s work on the Travel Is a Human Emotion podcast is this we’re-all-in-this-together attitude,” said Andrew. “Whether I’m working on the podcast or other projects at Spotnana, everyone is eager to pitch in and I think it makes the result that much better and more transformative.”