Jonathan Perkel
Senior Vice President, General Counsel

Bringing people together may seem like an odd goal for a lawyer, but those who know Jonathan Perkel best understand how that singular focus enables him to develop creative solutions that help accomplish the company's goals quickly and effectively.

Perkel was named Travelocity's Senior Vice President and General Counsel in July 2008. Heading up the company's legal department, his job includes providing legal counsel to all lines of business, maintaining the company's compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and representing the company before federal and local courts and agencies. Prior to his current role, Perkel was Travelocity's Vice President and Deputy General Counsel.

Perkel joined the Travelocity legal department in March 2002 upon Travelocity's acquisition of Site59, where he served as General Counsel. Prior to Site59, Perkel represented a number of other start-up and early stage companies as an associate with the New York office of Morrison & Foerster as well as with Axiom Legal Solutions, the nation's first distributed legal services firm. Earlier, Perkel gained extensive deal experience representing banks, investment banks and other lenders in transactional matters with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.

Perkel received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1992 (where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Virginia Law Weekly) and his bachelor's degree, cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. He is admitted to practice in the States of New York, New Jersey and the District of Columbia and is a member of the Association of Corporate Counsel. Perkel has also presented on various legal topics to legal and industry audiences.

Perkel's travel experience is not limited to the workplace, however; he commutes daily from Brooklyn to lower Manhattan on the back of a Vespa scooter! Jonathan is also a co-founder of the New York Scooter Club, which was formed in the fall of 2005 and has an active membership now numbering in the hundreds.

Favorite travel moment:
"Whenever I travel, I try to rent a scooter or motorbike and discover the people and places that the tourist buses don't visit. In that fashion, I have explored Rome, Barcelona, the Greek islands and Bermuda, but a highlight has to be zipping through the countryside outside Hue and Hoi An in central Vietnam. The memory of all the kids absolutely lighting up and coming running at the sight of the big American on a scooter passing through their villages still brings a smile to my face."