Throughout Womxn’s Historical past Month, we maintain house and have fun the often-overlooked tales and contributions of ladies in society. Ladies have lengthy been the pioneers of a number of the most historic actions in the USA.

On Worldwide Ladies’s Day, our minds instantly go to a number of the greats, influential ladies corresponding to Sojourner Fact, Rosa Parks, Sally Experience, Angela Davis, Malala Yousafzai, and Maya Angelou (simply to call just a few).

At the moment (and albeit every single day), we wish to pay homage to all of these trailblazing ladies earlier than us and amplify a number of the ladies main in our house of mobility justice, and lively transportation.

Paulina Baeza, she/her

Principal Metropolis Planner, Tulsa Planning Workplace & Adjunct Professor, College of Oklahoma City Design Studio

My title is Paulina Baeza, and I’m an Architect from Mexico with a background in Planning and City Design. I at present work because the Principal Planner for Planning and Design on the Metropolis of Tulsa, and I’m additionally an Adjunct Professor on the College of Oklahoma City Design Studio. As a Board Member for America Walks, I’ve had the distinctive alternative to advocate at a nationwide degree for what I do and train regionally. I even have met and collaborated with leaders which are engaged on these subjects all through the nation. 

As a Hispanic girl, I imagine cities ought to be deliberate and designed to incorporate range. Using an fairness lens is indispensable to make sure that everyone seems to be served, and as a planner, I may help foster extra inclusive communities by encouraging transportation, makes use of, and initiatives that deal with the wants of each group.

Over time, ladies’s position in society has shifted in direction of a extra lively participation within the labor drive and the economic system. Subsequently, planners ought to give attention to constructing cities that adapt to this shift and facilitate mobility between locations to safe a harmonious work-family interplay. Examples of initiatives that might help ladies’s wants embrace growing various (and reasonably priced) housing choices; encouraging proximity between need-based locations corresponding to employment, healthcare, colleges, childcare, and grocery shops by zoning; selling multimodal transportation choices, ADA accessible infrastructure, and language accessibility; and creating insurance policies that help job creation for ladies and flex-work environments. 

As well as, getting ladies concerned in all levels of the planning course of is essential, and we also needs to empower them to hitch the sector and improve their illustration. I’m lucky to have obtained many alternatives and I get pleasure from what I do, which is why I’ll proceed to advocate for extra livable and inclusive cities, and mentor future generations alongside the way in which.

About Paulina:

Paulina is an Architect from Puebla, Mexico, with a grasp’s diploma in City Administration, Land Valuation, and Planning from Barcelona, Spain, the place she performed analysis on the Polytechnic College of Catalonia. She not too long ago accomplished her second grasp’s on the College of Oklahoma City Design Studio and has participated in workshops, conferences, and the event of initiatives in Spain, Germany, Mexico, and the USA. She has additionally been concerned in Academia since 2010 and was each an ALBAN and CONACYT scholar.

Paulina lives in the USA and is at present the Principal Metropolis Planner for the Tulsa Planning Workplace at INCOG, Tulsa’s Metropolitan Planning Group, the place she oversees Strategic Planning. She additionally works within the growth of coverage and design proposals, public participation methods, placemaking, sustainable initiatives, resilience, and planning for inclusive communities.

Paulina teaches programs on City and Regional Transportation Planning, Sociology of Housing and Structure for Non-Majors at The College of Oklahoma, and lectures long-distance on the Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico. She started serving on the Hispanic Affairs Fee of the Metropolis of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in January 2018 and serves as a Board Member and Chair of the Programming Committee of nationwide American nonprofit, America Walks. She additionally serves as a board member for the Tulsa Regional STEM alliance. Discover her on LinkedIn.

Kea Wilson, she/her

Senior Editor for Streetsblog USA

I turned an advocacy journalist, largely, as a result of I’m keen about ending the damaging impacts of automotive dependency on marginalized teams, together with the gender-marginalized and the multiply marginalized. It’s not attainable to attain targets like Imaginative and prescient Zero till we interrogate and reckon with the distinct limitations we face to true freedom of mobility, and till we heart ladies, nonbinary individuals, and different underserved communities in shaping our personal lived actuality on our roads, rails, and past. It’s all the time my objective to inform tales that expose the unjust buildings that underlie our transportation system and to uplift the motion to dismantle them.

About Kea:

Kea Wilson is an advocacy journalist and speaker devoted to telling emotional, pressing, and actionable tales that inspire common People to get entangled in making their cities higher locations. She can also be a novelist, bike owner, and reasonably priced housing advocate. She lives in St. Louis, MO. Discover her on Twitter.

Sydney Sepúlveda, she/her

Program Supervisor

As a younger biracial girl working on the planet of transportation planning, issues aren’t all the time simple. Every problem to push ahead initiatives that heart walkability and streets designed for individuals encourages me to develop and strengthen my ardour for my work. I’m so grateful and privileged to have many ladies round me who’re working as advocates for people-centered planning. We’re one another’s help and inspiration and lean on one another to maneuver ahead. 

My ardour gravitates towards pedestrian security and walkability, and my advocacy method is closely influenced by my expertise strolling as a lady. As ladies, we are sometimes extremely attune to the environment – leaning on our instinct to take us the most secure route, which is commonly probably the most vibrant, probably the most accessible, probably the most well-lit, and probably the most comfy. We push strollers, carry heavy luggage, multi-task, chat with buddies, and accomplish that way more all whereas strolling. A avenue that’s deliberate round a lady’s expertise and wishes is a avenue that can almost certainly be loved and appreciated by all customers. 

My interactions with my metropolis’s streets additionally impressed me to create a social media web page centered round ladies on bicycles – @girlswhobicycle. My hope is to encourage and encourage extra ladies to bike and combine bicycling into their on a regular basis lives. No want for costly biking gear or apparel – we will put on no matter we wish! This journey has related me with ladies throughout the globe with comparable missions and has served as my very own supply of motivation to proceed bicycling to work, residence, the park, and past.

About Sydney:

Sydney Sepúlveda manages the Memphis Medical District Collaborative’s (MMDC) High quality Public Realm program. Previous to her time at MMDC, she obtained her grasp’s in Group and Regional Planning from the College of Texas at Austin. Sydney is pushed by a love for cities and a want to assist domesticate vibrant, protected, welcoming, and equitable locations for the people who inhabit them. A powerful and passionate advocate for pedestrians and bike riders, Sydney began an Instagram platform, @girlswhobicycle, to encourage and help different ladies bicyclists like herself.

Wendy Landman

Former Govt Director of WalkBoston

In 2019 America Walks posed a chance for our viewers, inside employees, and supporters to appoint ladies strolling champions who they admire. This piece was written by Stacey Beuttell, then the Govt Director of WalkBoston, in recognition of Wendy’s highly effective, 15-year tenure as Govt Director there. 

In February 2023 Wendy retired from WalkBoston – fortunately, she stays on the America Walks Board – however Stacey’s 2019 piece stays related to understanding Wendy’s position within the strolling motion. It additionally supplies an awesome overview of the viewpoint she brings to her advocacy which is grounded in her lived expertise as a lady and a mom. 

In honor of Ladies’s Historical past Month, we’re blissful to reprise (and replace) a few of Stacey’s article.

Wendy assumed the position of WalkBoston Govt Director in 2004. Throughout her tenure, Wendy reworked WalkBoston into a completely staffed, professionally-run statewide group acknowledged nationally for its pedestrian advocacy efforts and technical experience. She led WalkBoston’s efforts to give attention to the wants of Massachusetts’ most susceptible populations together with communities of colour and low-income residents, transit-dependent individuals, youngsters and older adults. 

Wendy is especially passionate in regards to the connection between strolling and transit, and may usually be heard stating that “transit is the center leg of a strolling journey.” Massachusetts state companies have heard her requires enhancing the “final mile” of a commute – from “a crosswalk at each bus cease,” to sidewalk enhancements and lighting to and from transit amenities – and have embedded these methods in statewide planning and capital enchancment efforts. Due to Wendy’s and WalkBoston’s continued advocacy, MassDOT (and plenty of Massachusetts municipalities) at the moment are piloting higher methods to undertake sidewalk snow elimination – a significant win for all of us however notably these with restricted mobility.

Ladies are typically the first caregivers of younger youngsters and older adults, and as such expertise difficulties associated to a difficult transportation system and unsafe strolling atmosphere extra usually than males. As a lady, Wendy can empathize with these struggles and sometimes names them when testifying about being depending on unreliable transit programs to select up youngsters earlier than daycare closes or take somebody to a medical appointment. Wendy, like her mentors earlier than her, has labored to diversify the transportation trade and convey the voices of these not usually heard from to the desk.

An important factor I’ve realized from Wendy is the significance of relationship constructing. Her method to advocacy focuses on coalition constructing and measured dialogue which has allowed her to push on points from the within and the surface. Strategic alliances between advocacy teams, state companies, coverage makers and community-based teams have led to a few of her greatest wins for strolling.

Wendy is a real believer in the concept that the standard of the constructed atmosphere has a direct impact on an individual’s high quality of life. She constructed longstanding relationships with the Massachusetts Division of Public Well being and superior the thought of the significance of walkable communities in Age-Pleasant efforts occurring throughout Massachusetts. You’ll usually discover Wendy poring over the newest analysis on strolling and well being, strolling and financial growth, or strolling and local weather resiliency. She believes in a data-driven evidence-based method and makes use of her data to align like-minded teams towards a standard objective of extra equitable, wholesome communities.

Replace:

When Wendy stepped down as Govt Director of WalkBoston in 2019 she didn’t retire however continued as a part-time Senior Coverage Advisor, a task that she held till February 2023. She helped WalkBoston navigate the COVID pandemic and efficiently urge Massachusetts to help and make everlasting the strolling enhancements that allowed communities to create out of doors areas that served the wants of socially distanced strolling, eating, and neighborhood actions.

Addie Walker, she/her

Advocacy Program Supervisor at Black + Motal Structure and City Design

I grew up in a household of architects and concrete designers, and from a younger age heard tales about walkable cities, about design, and about planning. Once we traveled, we’d discuss metropolis design, and the way a lot simpler it was to take transit overseas than at residence in Texas. I feel that in childhood I used to be overexposed to clever individuals talking about transportation and concrete planning – once I went to varsity, I instructed myself I’d examine one thing utterly completely different, and went into public well being. However I got here to study that design and transportation are intertwined with public well being and with the atmosphere and that wholesome cities are ones that help walkability, mixed-use, and sustainable practices. I began working in transportation and design advocacy as a method to help wholesome cities and sort out the local weather disaster. 

In my present position, I help nonprofits in Austin and Central Texas which are working to make our area extra walkable, transit-friendly, much less automotive dependent, and extra equitable and sustainable. Advocacy work could be difficult and emotionally demanding, however I’m regularly impressed by the others working on this subject, and the help that’s supplied to us on a nationwide degree, together with from America Walks. I see a paradigm shift within the works with regard to how we perceive and function cities. USDOT is talking plainly and overtly about institutional racism in planning and the way freeways are monuments to segregation – an enormous change from federal messaging even 5 years in the past. These adjustments convey me hope, and assist me keep in mind why this work issues. It takes hundreds of hours of advocacy to maneuver the needle the tiniest bit – however the needle does finally transfer, and the world is best off for it.

About Addie:

Addie Walker works because the Advocacy Program Supervisor at Black + Motal Structure and City Design based mostly in Austin, Texas. She is a third era Austinite and is grateful to work every single day to make her hometown extra walkable, equitable, and sustainable. In her skilled position, Addie supplies help for native nonprofits in Austin and Central Texas, together with the freeway combating group Reconnect Austin. She is a fellow of the 2022 Texas State Strolling School. Discover her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Courtney Thomas, she/her

Senior Coverage Analyst

I first turned concerned in neighborhood growth advocacy once I moved to Memphis TN for a analysis and instructing fellowship on city poverty. Via a contract with the TN Division of Human Providers, I served as a coach at a workforce growth company, instructing jobs expertise to people receiving public help, whereas learning the programs that contributed to poverty. Via the interactions with my purchasers and my very own expertise, residing and navigating a brand new metropolis,I shortly realized how the place you develop up and the place you reside can negatively or positively influence your high quality of life. Many neighborhoods lack entry to wholesome meals, monetary establishments, transportation, walkable streets, reasonably priced housing, and so many different fundamental requirements, all of which contribute to and lure individuals in cycles of poverty. I started to see social science analysis as a software not solely to investigate however to advocate and mobilize communities for social justice. I turned concerned in native initiatives and organizations the place I couldn’t solely study from the communities I served but additionally supply sources and help.

I at present function a Senior Coverage Analyst at Hope Coverage Institute, the place I coordinate and lead public coverage efforts to enhance the financial well-being of working households within the Deep South by utilizing analysis, outreach, and training. My compassion and empathy for others and their tales gas my advocacy. Whereas data-driven and evidence-focused analysis are crucial to construct stable circumstances for proposed insurance policies and authorized protections; social change can’t happen in an educational vacuum. It should be led by the individuals and heart the voices of those that are most affected. I try to advance truthful and equitable public insurance policies that heart the voices and experiences of black and brown communities and different traditionally marginalized teams.

About Courtney:

Courtney is a Senior Coverage Analyst at HOPE Coverage Institute. In her place, she coordinates and leads public coverage efforts to advance financial alternatives for working households within the Deep South by utilizing analysis, outreach, training, and advocacy. Her main areas of analysis embrace client safety, monetary inclusion, and neighborhood and financial growth.

Previous to becoming a member of HOPE, Courtney labored in coverage and advocacy at a neighborhood growth group in Memphis, TN, and accomplished a nationwide analysis fellowship on city poverty. She is a member of the Memphis City League Younger Professionals, a graduate of Management Memphis, and a 2021 America Walks Strolling School Fellow.

Courtney has a bachelors in Political Science and a Masters in Public Administration from Clark College in Worcester, Massachusetts. Discover her on LinkedIn.

Michia Casebier

President, M.G. Tech-Writing, LLC

For years, I’ve launched myself as a Multimodal Transportation Planner, as a result of the Secure Routes to College Program stole me from my Grant Administration job.  Earlier than that, I used to be willingly sucked into grant writing from my job instructing youngsters on the White Mountain Apache Indian Reservation.  However, I used to be known as to transportation advocacy, as a result of it’s attention-grabbing, difficult, and melds the talents I developed in my earlier vocations.  I like studying, writing (and instructing tribal and rural communities) about ideas like visible friction, pedestrian security islands, furnishings zones, and highway diets, and conveying how data and software of, these ideas to highway design can sluggish speeds and save lives – notably in long-neglected communities of colour.  One of many many challenges on this work is to encourage others to see its significance and help ongoing efforts to enhance the constructed atmosphere.  Thus, when roadway fixes are funded/put in, neighborhood members and native planners stay pushed to do long-range planning to extend security throughout their total highway community.

Though I by no means imagined a life doing this work, I used to be offering a SRTS coaching one morning in 2010, once I paused briefly after telling the room how pruning events draw neighbors collectively as advocacy groups and concurrently clear sidewalk areas for safer pedestrian entry.  For the primary time, I spotted that I used to be instructing the very data which may have saved my grandmother’s life in 1974 when she was hit from behind by a pickup truck.  If our neighbors had pruned the hedgerow, which overgrew the slender sidewalk that existed on just one aspect of our avenue, she wouldn’t have been strolling within the highway.  SRTS coaching additionally teaches pedestrians to stroll going through visitors, a security idea about which we weren’t but conscious in 1974.  My pause within the DOT convention room that morning was my sudden recognition that with out having ever consciously sought to take action, I used to be now ready to show individuals security approaches that might spare the lives of their family members.

My grandmother was an ever-present drive in my life as a result of my father was a single father or mother at a time when it was uncommon to see a father elevating a daughter alone.  One of many strongest and most unbiased ladies I’ve ever recognized, she taught me to bicycle and to make my very own alternatives.  I’m a League Biking Teacher now, who loves that thrill of feeling a toddler obtain stability on their bike, then letting go of the bike, to allow them to pedal forth on their very own.

My grandmother demonstrated perseverance in a world not but ready to simply accept her as an individual of colour in her subject, and definitely not because the administrator she turned.  Shirley Chisholm, the primary Black girl elected to the U.S. Congress, and to marketing campaign for the U.S. Presidency, as soon as mentioned, “In the event that they don’t provide you with a seat on the desk, convey a folding chair.”

The human physique is never in a position to survive the influence of our ever-larger pickups or SUVs, and my grandmother succumbed to her accidents that day when a teenage driver misplaced management within the first snow of the season and hit her.  Nonetheless, her drive and spirit dwell on within the work that I do.  If I train the talents; fund or assist construct the infrastructure; or match a toddler with a helmet that may assist save even one life or stop one granddaughter from dropping her Gram, then all of the journey, late night time, and weekend labor this work requires is value it.  And I invite others, who’re , to learn to do that rewarding work or to collaborate with us to make our roadways safer for extra than simply automobiles.

Molly O’Reilly

One among America Walks “Founding Moms”

I used to be launched into transportation in 1989 by a scheme to construct a western bypass freeway in Portland, OR. It could lower off the wildlife hall to the coastal vary from my beloved Forest Park. It yanked me out of my chair and stored me on my ft!

After the freeway’s defeat and transferring to Sandpoint, ID, in 2001 I wished to contribute to my new neighborhood. Transportation, I mused, was one thing I’d realized about. No one was advocating for walkability, so I made a decision to go there. I’m nonetheless there as a result of for me walkability is a social justice, well being, and environmental subject. When my native efforts have been quickly stymied, I joined the America Walks board and helped discovered and lead the Idaho Stroll Bike Alliance. All three activist ranges nonetheless stimulate and inspire me.

About Molly:

Armed with a level in historical past, I labored as a market analysis analyst within the auto trade (whereas they have been combating Ralph Nader and seat belts), wrote promoting copy, gave industrial listening to assessments, and was a Xerox gross sales rep and later a Xerox Service Supervisor, again when few ladies have been. I turned half proprietor of a wholesale nursery. Then Promoting Gross sales Director for Willamette Week Newspaper in Portland. Pioneer Courthouse Sq. in Portland employed me as their first Govt Director, the place I served for 4 years. 

Retiring early, my husband and I sailed throughout the Pacific to Australia, and again. We constructed and managed small, affordably-priced flats in Sandpoint, ID, and loved the out of doors life. Did rising up in a walkable neighborhood actually form me? Perhaps so. I’ve now been an advocate for walkability for 22 years.