Farewelcomes: SVBC Board and Staff

First the bad news. We lost two stellar Board members this past year albeit for acceptable reasons. 

Margarita Parra came to SVBC by way of her role as a grantmaker to SVBC. Through the Hewlett Foundation she funded SVBC to help the City of San Mateo experiment with bike share. Then she funded SVBC to better center diversity, equity and inclusion through the development of the organization’s DEI plan. Once she left Hewlett, we convinced her to join the Board where she has brought her international perspective and expertise on climate change and active transportation to the Board. Unfortunately, when Covid hit, her family decided to move to New Zealand where she’s now learning to be a Kiwi (who hails from Colombia). 

Jamie Chen is transitioning off the Board to avoid any appearance of conflicts because we hired her fiancée. Coincidentally, we tried to hire her years ago to help the organization implement what, at the time, was a dramatic shift in strategy to what you all now know as SVBC’s local team and organizing model. She turned our job offer down and ended up taking a position at the Packard Foundation. So we did the next best thing and recruited her to the Board. With her professional experience in organizing and academic background in organizational development, Jamie has been integral to SVBC’s recent and ongoing transformations. 

Fortunately, both Margarita and Jamie will remain active with SVBC as a part of the Strategic Planning Committee. A very heartfelt thank you to Jamie and Margarita. Their work and contributions have been transformative and they both will be missed as Board members!

The good news is we have a new Board member, Jennifer Fierman. Jennifer, too, is someone that we pursued over a few years for a Board role. We were originally introduced to her when she was working for Alta, a transportation planning firm. In that capacity, she volunteered for SVBC’s annual Summit planning team and we were immediately impressed. She recently changed jobs, moving further along in her transportation career and we tried to recruit her to the Board again. This time she said yes and we’re excited to welcome her to the SVBC Board of Directors. 

You can see a complete list of all Directors here. 

We also wanted to take the time to highlight the awesome staff at SVBC and at the same time welcome a new member of the team, Clarrissa Cabansagan. Clarrissa is no stranger to the organization or to the bike movement as she spent 8 years working for Transform, a nonprofit working at the intersection of social justice and environmentalism. One of the big initiatives she oversaw was Better Bikeshare, a program to make bikeshare more accessible to low income individuals. She has a masters in urban planning and brings to the organization a wealth of knowledge on nonprofit development and change management. She’s stepping into the role of Development Director, a role that will feed her personal passion for matching the needs and assets of low-income Black and Brown communities with money and resources.  

There you have it, your team of incredibly talented and passionate individuals working every day to ensure that mobility is not a barrier to success, the planet doesn’t kick us out, and we’re happy/healthy individuals.

Thank you for being a part of SVBC and we look forward to working with you in 2022 to bring bike joy to more folks in Silicon Valley.