New year, new staff, new promotions, new board

There are so many new, exciting things to share with you all I’m just going to jump right in.

At the end of last year, our wonderful Programs Director, Ann Jasper abandoned her mantra that SVBC would be her “I’ll be here until I retire!” job and jumped ship. We’ve forgiven her, sort of, as we know she’ll do great things for the City of San Jose running their Walk and Roll program. The silver lining is it gave SVBC an opportunity to shuffle things around a bit, look at the great talents on staff and plan for 2020. Some of the exciting changes include:

Violeta Palatto: Violeta is our newest employee and will join the program team leading the organization’s bike parking program. She is an avid bicyclist and has an incredible depth of experience working in schools to organize parent volunteers, something that is essential in Safe Routes to Schools work. Importantly, Violeta is eager to try several of SVBC’s tasks – development, advocacy, events – which is completely in line with SVBC’s cross-training approach to running an effective organization.

Emma Shlaes: Emma started working at the coordinator level overseeing SVBC’s advocacy in San Mateo County.  After 7 years, she has been promoted to SVBC’s Deputy Director. In that role she is taking on some incredible challenges, managing both the organization’s Programs AND Advocacy team. Emma’s promotion was an obvious choice as Emma is curious and eager to learn, highly organized, passionate about the mission, and has a mind for organizational development.

Mui Sam Le: Mui has been with SVBC a little over two years now in a program coordinator role. She successfully took on the challenge of launching and leading the organization’s program to bring a Safe Routes model to affordable housing communities and has been overseeing the Bike Share for All program, a program that provides low income bike share memberships to qualified riders. With the changes in staff, Mui has been promoted to a manager position and will oversee bike parking and SRTS staff.

Sandhya Laddha: With Emma taking on an expanded role, Sandhya Laddha, our Advocacy and Programs Coordinator will move into the position of San Mateo County Advocate. Sandhya joined the organization early in 2019 and started by dabbling in both the program and advocacy sides of the house. Most recently she has been leading the organization’s work in Sunnyvale to develop a sharable tool for prioritizing bike projects.

Board of Directors: On the Board front, the organization has three new Board members elected by you all, Melissa Cerezo Poon, Christina Salvatier, and Katie Deleuw.  Existing Board members, Amie Ashton and Jim Parker, have been elected Chair and Vice-Chair.

Finally, we’re hiring! If you know of folks who would like to join the SVBC Advocacy Team as a community organizer, send them our way. The job description is here.

SVBC has a great team of people who wake up every morning obsessed with the question of how to make the world a better place through the use of the bicycle. You can read more about our staff and Board here. As always, thank you, dear members, for the ongoing financial and volunteer support you provide. You, at the end of the day, are who inspires us to keep working hard to bring bike joy to the masses.