Maribel Mateo

KidWorks, Bike It! Santa Ana My name is Maribel Mateo and I am a freshman at Cal State Fullerton. The reason I, along with my brother and another youth, created Bike It! Santa Ana was because we wanted to see safer bike infrastructure in our community. For about three years my family didn’t have a car, and the fastest mode of transportation was biking because walking was time consuming. So as we started biking more, including my family, I noticed that many of the streets in our community weren’t safe and there were many people apart from us biking already. I am a Youth Organizer and this work includes campaign development, outreach, facilitating meetings, and educating myself and others about policy and advocacy. My role in the grant writing project for the Active Transportation Program (ATP) grant cycle 2 was doing data collection and answering questions that stated why we need the protected bike lane on Edinger Ave and how important it is to our community. Some of my interests apart from community organizing are playing sports, watching movies, and going to Disneyland because of my annual pass.

Tony Gatica

KidWorks, Bike It! Santa Ana My name is Tony Gatica and I am 15 years old. I am a sophomore at Godinez Fundamental High School. I bike because my family at one point did not have a car.  I started biking because it was faster and because I would get exercise from it. Even though I felt unsafe it was the quickest and my only way of transportation. I was one of the core youth that developed the Bike It! Santa Ana campaign because I felt that through our advocacy the city could become a nice place to bike. One of the projects that I have taken lead on is creating the bike survey which allowed us to collect data on where people were biking to and from in the city. I also captured footage on a Go-Pro and learned how to edit a video which explains the obstacles when riding your bike in Santa Ana. These projects I took lead on were part of the data we used to write a grant that received state funding of $2.3 million for a protected bike lane on Edinger Ave. This is a street with a high rate of bicycle and pedestrian collisions so we are promoting safety.  Edinger Ave is also one of the streets that lead me to home, to school and to KidWorks. I am proud of being one of the youth that helped in making the city bike friendly for future generations!

Gil (Guillermo) Penalosa, MBA, PhDhc

Founder and Chair of the Board, 8-80 Cities
Chair of the Board, World Urban Parks

Gil Penalosa is passionate about cities for all people. Gil advises decision makers and communities on how to create vibrant cities and healthy communities for everyone regardless of social, economic, or ethnic background. His focus is on the design and use of parks and streets as great public places, as well as sustainable mobility: walking, cycling and public transit.

Gil is the founder and chair of the board of the internationally recognized non-profit organization 8 80 Cities. The organization was created based on a simple philosophy; if you create a great city for an 8 year old and an 80 year old, you will create a successful city for all people. Gil also runs his own international consulting firm – Gil Penalosa & Associates and is an accomplished presenter and keynote speaker. Because of Gil’s unique blend of pragmatism and passion, his leadership and advice is sought out by many cities and organizations. Over the past 8 years, Gil has worked in over 200 different cities across six continents.

Gil has been a strong supporter and advocate for improving city parks, first making his mark in the late 1990s, when he led the transformation of Bogota’s park system as Commissioner of Parks, Sport and Recreation. During his tenure Gil successfully led the design and development of over 200 parks including Simon Bolivar, a 113 hectare park in the heart of the city. Gil’s team also initiated the “new Ciclovia”— a program that sees over 1 million people walk, run, skate and bike along 121 kilometers of Bogotá’s city roads every Sunday, and today is internationally recognized and emulated.

Gil is chair of the board of World Urban Parks, the international representative body for the urban parks, open space and recreation sector. Gil has also worked for the renowned Danish firm Gehl Architects as an urban expert on mobility and citizen engagement.

Gil also serves on the board of directors of City Parks Alliance and is a senior advisor to StreetFilms in NYC, American Trails and America Walks.

Gil holds an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, where he recently was selected as one of the “100 Most Inspirational Alumni” in the school’s history. In 2013 he received the Queen Elizabeth II – Diamond Jubilee Medal, given by the Governor General of Canada, and was named one of the “Top 10 Most Influential Hispanic Canadians”. In 2014 Gil received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Faculty of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at the prominent Swedish University SLU.

Gil has also contributed chapters to three books: Enabling Cycling Cities: Ingredients for Success – CIVITAS, Europe; Facilities for Cyclists – Copenhagen, Denmark; Resilient Sustainable Cities, Melbourne, Australia.

Jaquelin Palestino

Cycles for Change Youth Apprentice

Jaquelin Palestino is a sophomore at Community Peace Academy in St. Paul, MN. She started her youth apprenticeship at Cycles for Change as a freshman and plans to continue as an apprentice throughout her high school career. At C4C, Jaquelin helps staff open shop and Women, Trans, and Femme night. Her favorite part of working at C4C is the feeling of being a part of something, a community, a bike shop. Her favorite part of a bike to work on is overhauling the wheels and hubs. In her free time, she loves spending time with her family and enjoys photography. In the fall, she will begin College Possible. Her future plans include going to college in Minnesota. This will be her second time attending the Youth Bike Summit.

ROBERT SKIPPER

Cycles for Change Youth Apprentice

Robert Skipper is a sophomore at Community Peace Academy in St. Paul, and has worked at Cycles for Change for three years. He plays basketball and football and enjoys choir and artmaking. At C4C, he helps staff retail and open shops and has helped teach offsite classes. He loves working at C4C because he gets to see his future’s path unfolding before him everyday. His future plans include focusing on his last two years of high school, attending St. Paul College for two years, and transferring to a four-year school to major in engineering. Robert is excited for YBS because he gets to learn about other people’s experiences and what they did to get themselves to the Youth Bike Summit.

 

Nekima Levy-Pounds

Nekima Levy-Pounds, Esq. is an award-winning professor of law, civil rights attorney, and a nationally recognized expert on a range of civil rights and social justice issues at the intersections of race, public policy, economic justice, public education, juvenile justice, and the criminal justice system. She has a heart for the people and works towards achieving justice on behalf of those whose voices are often unheard within society.  A great deal of her legal work, scholarly writing, and advocacy focuses on identifying and implementing solutions for improving the quality of life for African Americans in general, and young African American men, in particular. To that end, she is co-founder and board chair of Brotherhood, Inc., a nonprofit organization geared towards young African American men ages 16-24, who have been involved in the criminal justice system or gangs or who are at risk of such involvement.

Professor Levy-Pounds also serves as a consultant to various civil rights groups, business entities, public policy organizations, academic institutions, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations. She is an orator, lecturer, moderator of political debates, motivational speaker, and keynote presenter in local, national, and international forums. She has also trained law enforcement agencies, corrections departments, and K-12 educators on understanding the impacts of historical trauma, discrimination and the impacts of the uneven application of laws and policies upon the African American community.

In her role at the University of St. Thomas Law School, she serves as the founding director of the Community Justice Project, an award-winning civil rights legal clinic, which focuses on issues of race, poverty, and social justice through direct advocacy, research, and writing at the University of St. Thomas.

Professor Levy-Pounds serves as the chair of the Minnesota State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and is the co-chair of Everybody In, a regional collaboration of over 40 stakeholders across different sectors working to close the racial unemployment gaps in the region by 2020.

Professor Levy-Pounds is active in the local community, serving on the boards of the Minneapolis Foundation, Catholic Charities, the African American Museum, and Growth & Justice.  She is also the author of numerous scholarly articles and essays on structural and systemic issues that impact poor communities of color.  Her work has been featured in The Star Tribune, MinnPost, Minnesota Public Radio, The Pioneer Press, Minnesota Spokesman Recorder, Finance & Commerce, Insight News, Politics in Minnesota, and The Daily Planet.

Professor Levy-Pounds received her BA Degree from the University of Southern California in African American Studies. She received her JD Degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana She also received a Mini-Masters in Business Administration from the University of St. Thomas.

Bio from nekimalevypounds.com.