Why are you interested in being a NABSA Board Member?

I want to bring my experience running bikeshare in New Orleans — from Social Bicycles through JUMP / Uber and now nonprofit Blue Krewe — to the broader bikeshare conversation and simultaneously learn from the experiences of others.

I believe my experiences in both the nonprofit sector — my first ED position was in 1999 and I co-founded a nonprofit, The Urban Conservancy (https://www.urbanconservancy.org/) in 2001 — and in the for-profit sector — from local startups to Uber — provide me with unique perspectives that I can bring to the organization.

I began my bikeshare journey in 2017 after selling my previous business. I joined the Social Bicycles team to launch bikeshare in New Orleans as the General Manager for the New Orleans market.

I lead the New Orleans market through the acquisition by Uber and scaled the market from 700 pedal bikes to a fleet of 1,350 e-bikes before Uber paused the market due to COVID and then exited the market soon after.

I then worked with the City of New Orleans, our title sponsor Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation to re-imagine bikeshare in New Orleans using a nonprofit model. We established a new nonprofit — Blue Krewe — which manages and operates the Blue Bikes system.

We relaunched in August of 2021 with a fleet of 500 e-assist bikes and have seen over 200,000 trips in our first year.

I look forward to contributing to the expansion of micromobility on a broader scale and hope that my experiences and my skills can help NABSA continue to be a leading voice moving forward.

What skills and experience would make you a good NABSA Board Member?

The skills and experiences that I bring to NABSA include:

• An entrepreneurial mindset: As someone who has launched and scaled both for-profit and nonprofit organizations in the past, I bring an entrepreneurial eye to each entity I work with.
• Process development and Implementation: If asked, I can assist the NABSA team in documenting processes and improving implementation to ensure the organization is meeting its internal goals.
• Experience building and scaling micromobility in the same market twice – using for-profit and nonprofit models. This unique experience provides me with insights that I believe could be valuable to NABSA which has both types of systems as stakeholders.
• Experience inside Uber / JUMP. Related to the above: Having seen the positive and negative aspects of the market-driven approach while now running as a nonprofit I can speak with nuance about both approaches.
• Brand Strategy: Prior to coming to micromobility, I was CEO of a Brand Strategy consultancy. I can bring my understanding of branding to NABSA if helpful.
• Bikeshare System Operations: Hands-on experience running daily operations for both pedal and e-bike systems and managing a team of 20+