Why I’m a Bike Advocate

I grew up in downtown Sacramento in a household without a car. From a young age, I understood that transportation was how we accessed opportunity. If something was close enough to walk or bike, or a bus or light rail route went there, we could access it. If not, that was not an opportunity open to us. 

Experiencing the world through this lens — you could call it the opposite of the windshield perspective — made me want to build a world where car ownership wasn’t the key to unlocking opportunity. It led me to a career in planning and, in 2023, to a leadership position at CalBike. 

While my household does own one car, the milestones in my life are more centered around active transportation: my toddler’s first ride on the back of my bike, her first balance bike, her first walk around the neighborhood on her own two feet. But I never forget the experiences that led me here, which are common to so many Californians who rarely get a voice.

Car-free adventures

As a kid, it didn’t seem odd to me that my family did not have a car. My mom still rode the road bike she’d had since the 1970s to get to work and took the bus or light rail longer distances. Everything I needed to do seemed to be a walk, bike, or bus ride away. 

Transportation often felt like an adventure, and getting to the destination was part of the fun. At times, it could be inconvenient to need to plan several bus connections to get to a weekend swim meet on the other side of town or ride my bike to school with my heavy backpack, but it was part of my family’s way of life, and I didn’t think much about it. 

As I headed toward adulthood, I started to notice that there were plenty of opportunities that weren’t open to us as a household without a car. We never really went on vacations; our common out-of-town trip was to visit San Francisco by Amtrak, a journey I enjoy to this day. As a single mother, my mom’s job opportunities were limited to employers within biking distance or on bus or light rail routes, and changes in weather or bus routing and schedule could easily change her ability to get to work on time. 

Advocating for families like mine

My childhood memories include my mother getting stuck at the end of a light rail line when the bus stopped running after regular commute hours and having to get a cab home she couldn’t afford. When we got free tickets to Disney on Ice, we had to take a cab from the suburban arena. My mother said later that she wouldn’t have entered the drawing for free tickets if she had realized the bus to the arena didn’t run as late as the show. Where and when we could go on public transit were limiting factors in our lives.

My experiences growing up in a car-free household that depended on public transit and biking to get around helped lead me into a career working to make it safer and easier for people to get around without a car. As an advocate for integrating land use and transportation planning early in my career, I worked to help local and regional planning better meet the needs of families like mine, who couldn’t just hop into a car to get to work or the doctor. 

Working as a transportation planner for over a decade, I focused on developing plans for safe, convenient, and connected bicycling and walking facilities in cities and towns throughout California, as well as programs to help people feel empowered to bike and walk to access their daily needs. 

Coming to CalBike is the culmination of a nearly 20-year journey to make California communities better for people like my family — people who can’t afford to own a car or aren’t able to drive. I work with our dedicated staff to craft policy to facilitate the design of better bicycle infrastructure, more funding to build it, and more programs to get people on bikes. We work with partners throughout the state who are on the frontlines, impacting local policy and projects, getting more biking and walking facilities in the ground. 

And I connect with our members and supporters, who all have their own reasons for being part of the movement: combating climate change, making communities safe for kids getting to school, creating economic prosperity and community health, and ensuring that collisions don’t take the lives of any more loved ones. 

Believing in a better world — with lots of protected, connected bikeways

To me, being a bike advocate is an exercise in radical optimism. I hold a vision of the future where people are able to feel the wind on their faces and enjoy the journey to work, school, and other destinations without fear of traffic violence — where people from all walks of life can get physical activity and stay healthy through transportation, supporting our environment, and saving themselves money in the bargain. 

I’m working to make the world a bigger and more welcoming place for the millions of people like my mother who can’t afford a car or choose not to drive. I want all Californians to do or be whatever they can dream up without the need to drive a car to get there.