Executive Director Shiloh Ballard's Month Five Reflections

With a few months now under her belt, SVBC Executive Director Shiloh Ballard reflects on her time so far and what projects we'll be focusing on to help us meet our overarching goal of 10% of trips by bike by 2025. You can contact Shiloh at shiloh@bikesiliconvalley.orgWhen I took the reins at Silicon Valley Bike Coalition in May, staff was in the throes of organizing Bike to Work Month. May is akin to the holiday season in the bike world and at the time the hard working and very busy staff hardly noticed my arrival. Their work paid off with another successful Bike to Work Month during which we had 30,000 people ride on Bike to Work Day.It’s been four months since then and many people are now asking about my focus for the organization as the new Executive Director. There are many big projects that will help us meet our overarching goal of 10% of trips by bike by 2025: an open streets program and a dramatic increase in fun ways of getting people to ride, securing more money for bikes through the pending transportation sales tax measure, leveraging the Google Bike Vision Plan, ensuring the success of bike share, promoting adoption of Vision Zero and more. To accomplish these projects, I’ll be focused on the following:1) Improve upon our existing programs and policy work in order to better achieve all the organization’s goals. What I mean by this is that before adding new work to the organization’s plate, I’d like to make sure our existing programs run effectively and efficiently. For example, we park bikes at every event at Levi’s stadium. Are we maximizing that opportunity? Or can we work with Levi’s to better promote the service?2) Understand and grow the funding streams of the organization so that we have the capacity to make Silicon Valley a mecca for people who ride bikes.3) And, my favorite, to dramatically expand and engage the organization’s membership in order to increase our power and effectiveness.In figuring out number 1, I’ve been spending time with staff to learn what they do. For those of you who are new to SVBC or simply need a refresher, here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve learned about our passionate and dedicated staff:Colin Heyne, Deputy Director: From putting out daily fires to being the point person in Santa Clara County for policy advocacy, Colin does just about everything. He is one of two advocacy staff members, the people who work with city staff behind the scenes to ensure a good staff report, educate councilmembers about bike infrastructure and ultimately help get bike friendly policies, more green paint and safe streets funded and built. But, that’s just a wee portion of his work. He also oversees our bicycle education team, helps with IT problems, provides excessive amounts of comic relief and is the office jack of all trades.Lyndsey Marks, Development Director: This is a new role that was created a little over a year ago so that the organization could bring in more money and as a result do more good work. Bike to Work Day, the Annual Dinner, the end of year letter requesting a donation from you – these are a few of the ways the organization raises unrestricted dollars that allow us to tackle challenging and dynamic policy issues. She also oversees our events and communications team and does not let a meal pass by without a healthy dose of hot sauce.Ernesto Lizaola, Education Programs Manager: Ernesto leads our bicycle education program, teaching kids and adults how to ride safely. This means he has an incredible knack for focusing fidgety kids on things like the proper way to wear a helmet and obeying the rules of the road. Through his work, the Coalition taught over 5000 kids and adults last year via 81 classroom presentations and 59 bike rodeos throughout Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties.Ann Jasper, Education Programs Coordinator: Ann is our newest hire after working with SVBC through various volunteer roles. She first made her debut with SVBC when she responded to a plea to our membership for the donation of a refrigerator. Her passion for bikes and our mission compelled us to pull her more and more into our work serving as a volunteer, a board member, a member of the Policy Committee, and now in a paid staff role.Carlos Velazquez, Outreach Manager: This is another new role at SVBC. For years we have struggled to find the time to communicate and market our work. And for years, we've tried to grow, better serve, and activate SVBC members. Now we have someone on staff dedicated to both and we’re already seeing the results in the number of new articles and increased TV coverage of SVBC. On the membership side, our current count stands at 2,600 with a 10% increase goal. The first major project for Carlos is to ensure that the world knows about Viva CalleSJ, San Jose’s first major open streets event. Be sure to be there on October 11th!Emma Shlaes, Policy Manager: Silicon Valley Bike Coalition categorizes its work into two main buckets. One bucket is getting people to ride (encouragement) and the other is making the roads safe through policy advocacy. We have two people on staff dedicated to advocacy and Emma oversees this work with a focus on San Mateo County. She is leading our Vision Zero campaign in San Mateo County as well our effort to get a bike lane along the entirety of El Camino Real. Recently, she, working collaboratively with SFBC, helped secure commitments from the Caltrain Board for increased bike capacity on future cars in addition to money for better station bike parking.Marissa Aviña, Event Coordinator: If you’ve been to an SVBC event, you likely were amazed at how smooth everything runs. That’s Marissa’s handiwork. She ensures that all our events are organized well and that once you get there, you have a seamless registration process, the food is excellent, and all moving parts shift cleanly. She is currently organizing our Annual Dinner which includes a silent auction, live auction, paddle raise, speakers, and everything else involved with organizing a gala for Silicon Valley’s cycling glitterati. Be sure to be there on October 30th.Anne Fisher, Administrative Manager: Every office has an Anne, the person that holds everything together on the administrative end of things. She pays the bills, tends to HR issues, makes sure we’re in compliance with the laws of the land and overall, keeps us out of trouble. She also makes sure we’re healthy by bringing in vegetables to share from her CSA.Finally, we have two employees on contract to handle our bike parking program, Alison Paulin and Dana Shmalz. If you park your bike with us, you’ll know which is which because Alison talks funny (she’s from New Zealand). Knowing there is secure bike parking helps encourage people to ride and SVBC can often be found at Niners games and other events providing valet bike parking.As is the case with many a small nonprofit, our staff is a passionate and dedicated group. SVBC is fortunate to have such a great team!