Say Hello to SVBC’s Newest Team Members!
SVBC is so excited to welcome a couple of friendly faces to the roster. Our newest team members come with backgrounds ranging from mental health counseling to legal work, and more than anything, are thrilled to be part of the bike movement. Without further ado, we’d like to introduce to the team Daniela Castañeda, Lauren Domagas, Raul Garcia, Anthony Montes, and Heather Wolnick.
Daniela Castañeda, Community Organizer
Daniela Castañeda is a proud Chicana dedicated to working with her community and supporting community healing through organizing, policy, and advocacy. To this day, she brings that same passion by supporting and empowering monolingual Spanish speaking community members in their native language. Prior to SVBC, Daniela supported survivors of sexual assault and intimate violence by delivering trauma-informed services as a sexual assault and domestic violence advocate at YWCA Golden Gate Silicon Valley.
With her community-oriented mindset and drive, she’ll be joining the Advocacy team and will continue working with communities of color towards creating a sustainable future.
Lauren Domagas, Events and Communications Coordinator
Lauren Domagas comes to SVBC with a background of marketing, communications, digital content creation, and writing. With a multicultural perspective, she’s applied much of her communications background to NGO and non-profit work, including creating a short animation video about sustainable energy in India, as well as kickstarting a cleantech startup program in Silicon Valley.
She’ll be joining the Engagement team where she'll bridge her knack for storytelling and enthusiasm for diverse representation.
Raul Garcia, Program Coordinator
Raul Garcia joins SVBC by way of another stellar bike non-profit, Good Karma Bikes. Prior to realizing his love and desire to understand all the mechanics of the humble bicycle, Raul worked as a grant writer, and as a mental health counselor from the Bay Area all the way to the Pacific Northwest. Raul has been helping connect people to bicycles since he developed a passion for cycling - by getting people set up with a new bike at Good Karma, or working with youth and families to develop their confidence and bike safety skills.
As part of the Programs team, he will help strengthen the bike education offerings while also bringing some deep wrenching experience to the team. Expect to see Raul out and about supporting the VTA Adult-ed program, Safe Routes to School, and family education efforts.
Anthony Montes, Community Organizer
Anthony Montes comes to SVBC with a passion for public service and improving his community. He spent two years working for Congressman Earl Blumenauer in Portland, Oregon. During that time, he generated outreach reports by tracking advocacy casework requests from constituents and serving as a liaison. Then, upon becoming a field representative, he spearheaded outreach efforts to local stakeholders by discussing their initiatives and how federal policy can improve on the work done locally.
As part of the Advocacy team, he brings a wealth of knowledge of democratic facilitation and consensus-building which he hopes to incorporate into his role to help foster further policy changes in the bike movement.
Heather Wolnick, Community Organizer
Heather Wolnick brings experience working in local government from her previous work as a public construction attorney with the City and County of San Francisco. Her passion for biking and walking advocacy has grown over the past few years, especially in the area of Safe Routes to School, when her children started attending public school. In addition to improving conditions for all walkers and bikers, Heather sees an urgent need to change the restrictions our children face moving around our public spaces independently. As one of the SVBC San Mateo Team leaders, her support was integral to the implementation of the North Central Bike Lanes project, which will add bike lanes on key east-west and north-south routes in San Mateo that are responsible for 11% of all bike-related collisions in the city in the past 5 years.
Heather plans to bring her logical, legal brain to developing and streamlining policies and procedures to support the local teams, so that volunteers can focus on building a community and getting things done.