What exactly is the IATA?

Every day there’s a flurry of articles about how the hotel and travel industry are trying to rebound and readjust to covid-era life.When there’s talk about speeding up that rebound the topic invariably touches on vax passports and why they’re so hard for a decentralized system like the U.S. to do. One body that shows up consistently in these conversations is IATA, the International Air Transport Association. Ok, so, what is the IATA, what is its mandate, can it help the state of international business travel, and how do you pronounce the acronym exactly?