Company Leadership
Barry Vandevier
Chief Information Officer
As Chief Information Officer of Sabre Holdings®, Barry Vandevier oversees the corporation’s varied and complex technology functions across four business units (Sabre Airline Solutions®, Sabre Travel Network®, Sabre Hospitality Solutions® and Travelocity®), which together span 60 countries around the world. Since assuming this role in 2006, Sabre Holdings has been recognized for three consecutive years by InformationWeek as one of the “Top 100 Most Innovative Users of Technology.”
Barry’s role requires an operationally bifurcated view — a microscopic focus on the details of each business’ specific technology solutions, combined with a 30,000-foot perspective of the entire enterprise’s technology development, delivery, implementation and stability. Arguably, Barry’s ability to manage both views simultaneously comes from his original course of study and career path as an industrial engineer whose college internship with American Airlines involved daily flights to airports throughout the United States. In his first exposure to the airline industry, Barry was tasked with conducting business process optimization on every aspect of airport operations, from the cleaning of airplanes to baggage handling to gate agent scheduling.
Prior to this internship, Barry had seldom flown on a commercial airplane, but he quickly made up for lost time by embarking upon a career in the travel industry that would take him around the world not once, but several times. Upon completion of his internship with American Airlines, Barry joined the company officially as an industrial engineer developing staff planning algorithms, which Sabre (as a subsidiary of American Airlines at that time) used in its development of its staff planning system. He then joined Sabre as a software developer, supporting agency and hotel reservation products, before moving to Travelocity as a lead software developer. During his tenure at Travelocity, Barry was instrumental in the creation of the online agency’s site functionality and was ultimately named Chief Technology Officer, responsible for all decisions about the site’s technical direction and architecture, before being named to the Sabre Holdings CIO position.
His love of the 30,000-foot view continues in his personal life as well; Barry holds a pilot’s license and, with the “permission” of his wife and two daughters, enjoys flying tail draggers when he has any spare time.
Barry earned a bachelor of science in industrial engineering from Oklahoma State University and an MBA from Southern Methodist University. In 2010, he was awarded the Outstanding Young Alumni distinction by SMU's Cox School of Business. As a recognized leader in technology, he also participates in several industry forums including boards of advisors for HP and Cisco.
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Fast Facts
- Headquarters: Southlake, Texas
- Approximately 10,000 employees in 60 countries