Scholarship Application

Speaker Bios

Panel 1 - The Funding Crisis: Finding Money for Transit, Bicycle and Pedestrian Facilities in Tough Times

Joshua W. Shaw

Joshua W. Shaw is recognized as one of Sacramento’s leading transportation policy advocates, having worked on behalf of statewide transportation associations, individual transportation agencies, the construction management industry, and local and regional planning agencies.
Mr. Shaw is currently the Executive Director of the California Transit Association, a trade organization representing the state’s public transportation industry.
Mr. Shaw’s government advocacy duties and experience include: drafting legislative language; reviewing, tracking and analyzing legislative bills, public laws, and agency regulations, including Federal laws; monitoring legislative committee and agency hearings; testifying at hearings; maintaining cordial and cooperative relationships with key legislators, legislative staff and committee consultants, and administrative agency staff, including in the Governor’s Office; coordinating legislative strategies with other interest groups and related associations; and, maintaining liaison with clients regarding pending legislative issues and developing strategies to move client interests forward.
He has served on the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the American Public Transportation Association, as Vice Chair of State Affairs.
Mr. Shaw holds a Master of Arts degree in American Government and Politics & Public Administration, from the University of California at Davis, as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science, from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
He lives in downtown Sacramento with his wife Silvia Solis Shaw, and their two-year old son William. (Amongst other activities, William digs watching and riding trains and busses.)

Carrie Cornwell

Carrie Cornwell currently serves as Chief Consultant to the Transportation and Housing Committee of the California State Senate. A position she has held since March 2005.
Immediately prior to her current position, Ms. Cornwell was the Deputy Treasurer for Public Finance and Legislation to California State Treasurer Phil Angelides.
From 2000 through 2004, Ms. Cornwell served as Capitol Chief of Staff to California State Senator Tom Torlakson, who represented most of Contra Costa County. She served in the same capacity for Mr. Torlakson during his four years in the California State Assembly.
Ms. Cornwell’s policy expertise includes transportation, housing, economic development, redevelopment, and land use. She has served as Chief Consultant to the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee and as Chief Consultant to the Assembly Transportation Committee.
Outside the Capitol, Ms. Cornwell has been an adjunct professor of economics at Sacramento City College and at Sierra College. She also chaired the Sacramento County Project Planning Commission.
Ms. Cornwell earned a Bachelor’s Degree in economics from UCLA and Master’s Degree in Public and International Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.
She resides in the Land Park neighborhood of Sacramento with her husband and their son.

Denny Zane

Denny Zane is Executive Director of Move LA, an organization that coalesces environmental, labor, business, and community leaders and organizations to champion the development of a clean, efficient, and robust transit system for Los Angeles County. Move LA initiated the coalition and campaign for Measure R, placed before Los Angeles County voters by LA Metro on November 4, 2008. Measure R provided for a 1/2 cent sales tax increase for transportation purposes and was approved by nearly 68% of voters and will generate nearly $40 billion in new transportation funding over the next 30 years, nearly 70% of which will be invested in transit system development and operations.
With the victory for Measure R, Move LA and Zane turned their attention to championing the creation of a significant federal loan program in order to secure low-interest financing that could ensure the accelerated development Measure R transit projects. This led to what we now call the 30-10 Plan and the America Fast Forward program now included in the Senate version of the federal transportation reauthorization bill. Simultaneously, Move LA worked to build the coalition and strategy that led to an April, 2012, adoption by the Southern California Association of Governments of a more transit-oriented and smart growth-oriented Regional Transportation Plan and Sustainable Community Strategy. Move LA is also active in formulating strategies for ensuring effective Transit Oriented Development policies that facilitate economic development, ensures preservation and expansion of affordable housing, and provides for development of bicycle, pedestrian and shuttle programs to facilitate transit access.
Zane is a former Mayor of the City of Santa Monica where he is best known for championing affordable housing and environmental initiatives as well as leading the effort to create the Third Street Promenade.

Walter Ramirez

Graduated from Fresno State with a BA in Political Science and a national certification on nonprofit Management and Leadership, Walter Ramirez is the Community Advocate with California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation in Fresno. He is currently working with rural unincorporated-underserved communities in the California Central Valley. Walter is working alongside community members, community benefit organizations and schools on several initiatives to promote healthy communities and equity in land use and transportation planning. Some of the initiatives working on include the Safe Routs to School project and advocacy directed toward the Unmet Transit Needs process in counties throughout the San Joaquin Valley.

Guillermo Mayer

Guillermo Mayer is a senior staff attorney at Public Advocates Inc., a civil rights organization headquartered in San Francisco,California. He specializes in Title VI litigation and advocacy aimed at improving mass transit services for low-income communities of color. PublicAdvocates works hand-in-hand with community organizations working to achieve transportation equity. Guillermo helped lead the Title VI challenge against BART’s Oakland Airport Connector in 2009. He also leads Public Advocates’ federal advocacy efforts targeting the transportation reauthorization bill.
Guillermo graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 2004 with concentrations in Critical Race Theory and Public Interest Law & Policy. Prior to attending law school, he worked in the California Senate, first aslegislative aide for Hilda Solis, and subsequently as legislative director for Tom Hayden. Originally from Guadalajara, Mexico, Guillermo lives with his wife and son in Oakland, California.

Panel 2 - Healthy Streets: Making Smart and Active Transportation a Reality in California

Neil Maizlish

Neil Maizlish, PhD, MPH is a Research Scientist at the California Department of Public Health. His focus areas are the public health impacts of climate change and the built environment, modeling the health co-benefits of active transport, and the development of health community indicators. He was formerly the epidemiologist for the City of Berkeley Public Health Division, and was engaged in public health surveillance, program evaluation, and health services research. Dr. Maizlish has over 25 years of experience in quantitative research methods, statistics, and health informatics in local and state government, academia, community clinics, unions, and the private sector. Despite increasing specialization of epidemiology over the years, Dr. Maizlish is an unabashed generalist. He has authored a textbook on epidemiologic surveillance and over 30 scientific articles on topics as varied as cancer mortality in foundry workers, neurobehavioral consequences of toxic exposures, patient satisfaction in managed care plans, the quality of diabetes care in low income patients, the design of health information systems, and surveillance in case-based registries. He is the former Director of Clinical Quality Improvement at Brown & Toland Medical Group, research manager at the California Department of Industrial Relations, and a Fulbright scholar in Latin America. He has been a consultant to the World Health Organization, and was an adjunct professor at the University of California (Berkeley).

Deb Hubsmith

Deb Hubsmith is the founding director of the Safe Routes to School National Partnership and the Chair of the California Safe Routes Network. Deb started as a grassroots advocate 20 years ago and was the founding executive director of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition. She played a leadership role in creating Marin’s pilot programs for Safe Routes to School and bicycle infrastructure, and led campaigns to adopt local transportation sales taxes which fund SRTS and the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit train and pathway. Deb also led the national campaign which authorized $1 billion for a federal Safe Routes to School program in 2005 which benefits all 50 states, and she spearheaded the California AB57 campaign which has allocated an additional $24M/year to SR2S in CA. Deb has testified before Committees of the U.S. Congress, does national public speaking, and has authored many reports and publications on Safe Routes to School and the links between transportation, the environment and public health. She got her start in transportation advocacy in 1996 after totaling a car and since that time has used a bicycle as her primary means of day-to-day transportation.

Teri Duarte

Teri Duarte is Executive Director of WALKSacramento, a nonprofit that promotes safe, walkable communities for all residents. Teri has a Master of Public Health degree from U.C. Berkeley, and prior to joining WALKSacramento in February 2011, served as Director of the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Nutrition Program for the County of Sacramento for 22 years. In 2004, she began to work with the Sacramento City and County planning departments to develop policies that promoted public health. She contributed language and policy to the draft general plan updates of Sacramento City and County; provided comments on several elements of the draft general plan updates; and commented on draft environmental impact reports. Teri has delivered presentations on the health impacts of the built environment to thousands in the Sacramento region, including the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors and its advisory committees, and the City and County planning departments and their General Plan Update advisory committees. Teri was a regular instructor in the City of Sacramento’s Land Use Planning Academy. She served part-time in 2009-10 in the Land Use and Transportation unit of the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District, helping to incorporate broader public health concerns into the agency’s comment letters on proposed land use projects in the region. Before joining WALKSacramento she was chair of “Design Sacramento 4 Health,” a group of local physicians and other health professionals advocating for land use and transportation design that improve public health. She has lived in Mexico and is fluent in Spanish.

Dave Snyder

Dave was hired in January 2011 to lead CBC after serving as board president. He is a long-time organizer and advocate for socially just transportation and land-use policies. He rides his bike for most trips in his home city of San Francisco, including frequent weekend camping trips. He’s become very fond of the Capitol Corridor commuter train between San Francisco and Sacramento, and of biking and walking around the State Capitol.
His bicycle advocacy began in 1991, when he served as the executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, where he built the organization from a handful of members to a powerhouse of 4,500 members. He left in 2002 to found Transportation for a Livable City. Before coming to the California Bicycle Coalition, first as board president and now as the executive, he served as an organizational development specialist for the Thunderhead Alliance (now the Alliance for Biking & Walking) and also as the director of Transportation Policy for a San Francisco-based think tank.

Panel 3 - Completing the Vision: Supporting Sustainable, Equitable, Transit-Oriented Land Use Development

David J. Mogavero

David Mogavero is the Senior Principal of Mogavero Notestine Associates, an architecture, urban planning and development firm in Sacramento, California. He began his career designing naturally heated and cooled buildings thirty years ago.
His practice now embraces the full range of progressive community design, such as high density mixed use urban infill and holistic building systems, including daylighting, natural ventilation, passive heating and cooling, orientation, solar shading and water recycling.
His roles as developer and environmental advocate help him conceive projects that are economically viable and sensitive to the community and the environment.
Through his professional practice, his writings and lectures, and as prior president and current Board member of the Environmental Council of Sacramento, Board member of The Planning and Conservation League and Board member of the California Infill Builders Association, he has promoted the widespread adoption of sustainable building and smart growth practices and policies.

Shamus Roller

Shamus Roller is Executive Director of Housing California and has an extensive background in coalition building, community outreach, fundraising, and leadership. Before joining Housing California in 2011, Shamus served as the Executive Director of the Sacramento Housing Alliance, where he spearheaded major policy initiatives (including campaigns for mixed-income housing and transit-oriented development); developed and nurtured relationships with community leaders as well as national, regional, and local government officials; and tripled the organization's revenue.
Prior to his time at the Sacramento Housing Alliance, Shamus worked as an attorney at Justice First LLP, a private law firm practicing in areas of employment discrimination, civil rights, and criminal appeals. Shamus has served on the boards of the Environmental Council of Sacramento and the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee, as well as on the Regional Advisory Committee for the U.C. Davis Center for Regional Change, and the Interagency Council of the Ending Chronic Homelessness Initiative.
Shamus received his B.A. in history at Reed College, and J.D. from the University of California, Hastings.

Ann Cheng

Ann Cheng is the director of GreenTRIP – TransForm’s green building certification program for new residential, mixed use development that encourages less driving by reduced parking and incentives like free transit passes and carshare. She also developed the Great Communities Collaborative Toolkit, used throughout the region in developing model station area plans and provides technical assistance to community groups engaged with planning processes.
Over the last decade Ann has been a transportation consultant and has developed design guidelines, bicycle and pedestrian master plans and coordinated planning efforts. Ann was elected to the El Cerrito City Council in 2008, served as Mayor in 2011 and is currently a Councilmember. Ann loves that her work helps to empower communities with planning and transportation tools that can improve their environment, health, wealth and equity. Ann has a B.S. in Environmental Biology and Management at UC Davis.

Panel 4 - Communicating the Vision: Good Framing for Effective Advocacy

Bonnie Holmes-Gen

Bonnie Holmes-Gen has over twenty five years of experience as a public interest and health advocate on a wide range of air quality and environmental health issues. Bonnie serves as the Executive Director for Air Quality and Public Health for the American Lung Association in California. Since joining the Lung Association in 2000, Bonnie has been the lead lobbyist on air quality and environmental health issues. She led the organization’s advocacy and outreach efforts on global warming (AB 32 Nunez/Pavley) implementation, healthy communities, transportation and land use coordination, heavy-duty diesel pollution, alternative fuel and zero emission vehicle programs, electricity generation and air pollution, indoor air pollution and statewide and local air pollution control programs. She regularly testifies before the California Legislature and state agencies such as the California Air Resources Board and the California Energy Commission.
Bonnie oversees several statewide grant projects in state and local advocacy that support the Lung Association’s air quality and global warming priorities and spearheads the association’s annual State of the Air public and media outreach efforts. Bonnie also provides information, resources, and guidance on air quality issues to staff and volunteers throughout California. In 2009, Bonnie was awarded the “Excellence Award in Advocacy” by the Congress of Lung Association Staff (CLAS), a national staff organization. Prior to working for the American Lung Association in California, Bonnie was the Senior Legislative Representative for Sierra Club California in Sacramento and worked on a wide range of environmental issues. Bonnie has a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning from the University of California at Davis (June, 1982) and a Master of Arts degree from New College Berkeley (August, 1993).

Kathryn Phillips

Kathryn Phillips leads lobbying and regulatory advocacy and overall administration of Sierra Club California. She began this role in August 2011.

She previously directed transportation and air pollution work in California for Environmental Defense Fund, where she worked on regional, state and federal policy, and also gained experience in agriculture policy and water policy. Before joining EDF, she was a senior policy advisor at the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, where she focused on air quality and transportation issues. Kathryn has been based in Sacramento since 2001.

Kathryn holds a B.A in history from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Missouri, Columbia, and a Master of Public Policy degree, with a dual focus on natural resources and transportation, from the University of California, Los Angeles. A former journalist, she is the author of two books about environmental issues.