Team

Meet the team driving our mission at the intersection of sustainability, artificial intelligence, and media. Our experts combine strategic insight with technical and creative expertise to deliver impactful, future-focused solutions. #BeSustainableFirst

Bernard Metzger, Founder | AI-Powered Ranking Systems

Bernard build AI-powered intelligence and ranking systems for travel, hospitality, lifestyle, and global destinations. His work focuses on transforming traditionally subjective industries into data-driven, structured, and globally comparable systems.

In 2017, he founded TOP25 Restaurants, the world’s first AI-powered restaurant guide, introducing a new model for evaluating culinary and sustainability excellence through multi-dimensional scoring frameworks.

He is a renowned expert on topics related to online tourism marketing, sustainability evaluation systems and communications and is the Founder and CEO of the Travelindex Group, which includes TravelNewsHub.com and TOP25Restaurants.com and TOP25Hotels.com. For Travelindex Group, Bernard signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UN Tourism, formerly United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).

Mafalda Borea, Chair & Co-Founder

Mafalda has over twenty years experience in the media industry working across destination & cultural tourism, and travel technology marketing.

She is an Executive Director and sits on the board of Travelindex Group, the powerful portfolio of influential tourism digital brands that Sustainable First is a part of, and is a board member of the Travel & Tourism Foundation and other charitable foundations.

Previously Mafalda lead CNN’s advertising sales and client development across Southern Europe and the CIS region. More recently her long standing interest in Chinese arts and culture took her on a journey to learn Mandarin and culminated in a role as Deputy-Editor of China Report Magazine for two years. She continues to serve as an advisor to the Director of the Confucius Institute for Business at the LSE (London School of Economics).

Mafalda on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

Ella Windsor, Contributing Editor

Ella is a Latin America specialist and writer. Working with travel, conservation, tourism and creative sectors, she advises Latin American companies expanding into the United Kingdom, and vice versa. She draws from her experience living in the region and from her work with Latin America’s public and private sectors over the past twelve years.

She is a regular contributor to Monocle Magazine and The London Magazine and has previously written for The Daily Telegraph, The Ecologist, The Evening Standard, Suitcase Magazine and Conde Nast Traveller. She is currently involved with setting up the AMA Foundation for Marine Conservation in Baja California, Mexico.