Governance

Board Members

New Board (October 2009)

Elections of the new board have been held in October 2009 in New York.
(in alphabetical order):

* = members of the executive group

_____________________________________________________________________

Amy Aeron-Thomas (Great Britain) Road Peace
Amy Aeron-Thomas is the Executive Director of RoadPeace, the national charity for road crash victims in the UK. She started as a traffic engineer in the US before working for TRL for over ten years promoting road safety in low income countries. Her work included developing national road safety action plans, improving road safety databases, researching under-reporting, costing crashes and documenting their socio-economic impact of crashes on families. Her current work includes managing a DFID funded road safety pilot project in Nigeria which is intended to improve compensation for road crash victims and increase awareness of the road traffic injury burden. In the UK, RoadPeace provides emotional and practical support to crash victims, campaigns for road danger reduction, and increased awareness of the secondary discrimination crash victims face from the justice sector with crashes still treated as "accidents" instead of potential crimes. She has a MSc in Transportation Engineering, MP in Planning and MPA in Public Administration, all from the University of Virginia. She is American but resident of UK for the past 20 years.
Contact: amy.aeron-thomas@tiscali.co.uk
_____________________________________________________________________

Mario Alves (Portugal) Associação de Cidadãos Auto-Mobilizados (ACA-M) - www.aca-m.org Treasurer IFP
Mário J. Alves has a degree in Civil Engineering and a Master of Science in Transport. He worked at the Centre for Transport Studies of the University of London and the Centre for Urban and Regional Systems of the University of Lisbon. He was executive coordinator of mobility plans and participated in several European projects related to walking and cycling. Recently he worked on a report to critically assess the policies of the Portuguese government to achieve the Kyoto targets. He was part of the International Scientific Programme Committee of the conference Walk21 in Toronto and National Coordinator of the COST Action: Pedestrian Quality Needs. He was advisor for the Mayor of Lisbon and currently advisor for several Portuguese and European institutions. In 2010 he was the co-editor the book "The Walker and the City". Over the last decade wrote articles and presented numerous papers and seminars on topics related to walking in particular and transport and sustainable mobility in general. Contact: mariojalves@gmail.com
_____________________________________________________________________

Terence Bendixson (Great Britain) Living Streets, FEPA
He is a transport and land use policy analyst, a Visiting Fellow at the University of Southampton and Secretary of the Independent Transport Commission (ITC). The ITC is Britain�s only transport think tank without any party political leaning. Its two main fields of research are the future of the suburbs and road user charging.
Bendixson has been an officer of Living Streets (the Pedestrians Association) for over 30 years and is currently its President: he is Secretary of the Federation of European Pedestrian Associations (FEPA) and seeking to re-launch it as an effective European group.
After reading history at Oxford, Bendixson worked on The Guardian as Planning Correspondent and then moved to The Observer where he was in the Environment Bureau. He wrote �Instead of Cars� (Penguin 1976) and later worked as a consultant for OECD, the European Commission and others.
Contact: t.bendixson@pobox.com
_____________________________________________________________________

Eduardo J. Daros (Brasil) ABRASPE (Brazilian Pedestrian Association)
Civil Engineer-State of Parana Federal University, 1955, and M.A. in Economics-Stanford, 1961.
Has worked and held important positions both in government agencies and private enterprises in Brazil, his native country. In 61-62, was a member of the United Nations advisory group to the Government of Bolivia Planning Ministry, in La Paz. Has also been a consultant in transport economics and planning. In June 1981, founded the Brazilian Pedestrian Association and since then has been an activist focused on pedestrian needs for safe and comfortable walking in Brazil, and particularly in Sao Paulo, where he lives since 1973. Maintains the ejdaros.blogspot, as an outlet to protest and to restore his emotional balance.
Contact: daros@transporte.org.br
_____________________________________________________________________

* Mauricio Leandro (Costa Rica) Asociacion Caminar Costa Rica
EDUCATION: 2007- to date Phd. Student. Psychology/Environmental PhD. Program The Graduate Center, The City Univ. of New York / 2001 Master in Computer Science. Univ. de Costa Rica.
1990 Licentiate Degree in Psychology. Univ. de Costa Rica.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE: 2007 to date: Full time faculty member, School of Psychology.
1999 - 2007: Adjunct-Teaching responsibilities.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: 1998-2005 Consultancies in Human Factors and built environment, pollution, public health (PAHO/WHO) and transportation.
2000 - 2003 Assessment and recruitment by using behavioral simulations. National Energy Company, Costa Rica. / 1999 - 2000 Consultancy in Performance Management.
Contact: mleandrocr@gmail.com
_____________________________________________________________________

Gregory Mavrakis (Greece) enosipezon (Greek Pedestrian Association)
I am the vice-president of the Association for the rights of the pedestrians at Thessaloniki, Greece. I am 46 years old, with a degree on Economics from the Aristotle's University of Thessaloniki on 1983 and MBA from Syracuse University, Syracuse NY, USA on 1985. I live and work in Thessaloniki ever since, during the last years as a consultant to regional authorities on European Funding Opportunities. I have been a member of the board of our Association since it was initially formed in 1996. I am also coordinating unofficial groups of activists at Thessaloniki on their struggle to draw attention on the supressed right of the people to walk safely and respectfully in the city. I can easily work on an international decentralized-Internet-based environment.
Contact: gmavrakis@gmail.com
_____________________________________________________________________

Dieter Schwab (Austria) Vice-President IFP Walk-Space.at
Dieter Schwab was born 1959 in Vienna, Austria, where he made a Master degree in Urban and City Planning (Technical University of Vienna). He worked as a member of the staff of the urban planning and development department, traffic planning and regional development section of the Vienna City Administration from 2004 to July 2006. He serves as an expert of the Vienna City Administration regarding pedestrians, head of the pedestrian expert group.
As of August 2006, he became expert for TRAFICO Transport Planning Agency. Field of responsibility: Walking pedestrian areas.
In January 2007 he founded the Austrian Pedestrian Organisation named "walk-space.at - der oesterreichische Verein fuer FussgaengerInnen"), Chair.
Contact: dieter.schwab@walk-space.at
_____________________________________________________________________

* Ole Thorson Jorgenson (Spain) Catalunya Camina
Born in Copenhagen in 1941. Civilengineer and Ph.D. from the Politechnical University of Denmark 1964 and Barcelona 1983. Specialised in traffic, transport, road safety and pedestrians. 1967-70 Danish Council of Road Safety Research. 1970-89 Traffic Planning Division, Barcelona Municipality and 1980-89 Head of the Division. 1972 - Director of the Consultant firm INTRA s.l. 1989- 2006 Associated professor at the Politechnical University of Catalonia (Transport). Vice-president of the Spanish Traffic Accident Prevention Association. (since 1984): Board member of the European Federation of Pedestrian Associations (FEPA). President of the International Federation od Pedestrians since 2005. Founding member of the board of The Spanish Association for Pedestrian Rights.
Contact: thorson@ysi.es
_____________________________________________________________________

* Ellen Vanderslice (USA) Vice-President IFP Americawalks
Ellen Vanderslice is an architect and musician in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A., who has been active in transportation reform for almost four decades. She was a founder of one of the first pedestrian advocacy groups in the U.S., Oregon Walks (originally the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition), and in 1996 helped found America Walks, the national coalition of pedestrian advocates, serving as its president for seven years. She was the host chair of Walk21 2003 in Portland, and has been a featured speaker at conferences and events across the U.S and around the world. In 2012 Ellen retired from her career as a project manager for the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation.
Contact: ellenv@hevanet.com
____________________________

Stefan van der Spek (Holland)
Stefan Christiaan van der Spek (architect MSc PhD), assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences at the DUT, is teacher in the Masters programme of Urbanism and Architecture as well as in the Bachelor programme.
He has studied an worked in Switzerland and Holland and was responsible for the graduation studio's "de OverstapMachine" (1997-2001) and "Connected City" (2001-2003). These studio's were directly related to his PhD named "Seamless Multimodal Mobility : Intermodal Transfer Points". The thesis was published under the name: "Connectors, the way beyond transferring". In 2003 he founded "SC.Design", a design and consultancy office in the field of Architecture and Urban Design. Currently he is participating in two research projects: Spatial Metro (Interreg IIIb) and Connected Cities (Interreg IIIc).
Stefan van der Spek has been co-founder of the new Dutch pedestrian organisation MENSenSTRAAT.
Contact: mens@mensenstraat.nl
_____________________________________________________________________

* Geert van Waeg (Belgium) President IFP
Born in 1959 in Brussels, Belgium, Geert got his PhD in medical science in Uppsala, Sweden. From the mid 70ies on, he was active around non-motorized road users (mainly cyclists, as local chairman of the "Groene Fietsers" in Brussels) and liveable cities (Brukselbinnenstebuiten). Together with family and friends, he founded the NGO johanna.be, after he lost his daughter when a car crashed into a group of scouts on a hike on a small country road in 2003. Johanna.be supports local grass root initiatives around infrastructure for non-motorized road users in Belgium through advice and visibility of the projects on its website. Defending the fine network of public footpaths and right-of-ways for the generations to come is done both through johanna.be and through the NGO Trage Wegen (slow roads), of which he is a board member. He is member of the United Nations Road Safety Collaborative, and represents the IFP at the First Ministerial Conference on Road Safety in Moscow, November 2009.
Contact: geert.vanwaeg@johanna.be
_____________________________________________________________________

Celia Wade-Brown (New Zealand) Living Streets Aotearoa
Celia Wade-Brown was born in Paddington, London. She walked to school, local parks and friends' houses. She frequently used buses and the tube. She studied Philosophy at Nottingham and saw how the 60s ring-road had devastated the heart and heritage of the city. As a student, she cycled and walked and, apart from a brief experiment as a motorcycle owner, didn't acquire a motor vehicle until she was assigned a company car on starting work at IBM. In 1983, Celia emigrated to Wellington and worked in the IT business. In 1994, she was first elected to Wellington City council, as a Green Councillor. The Environment portfolio is her current responsibility, which includes Climate Change, Biodi-versity, Energy, Water, Resources & Waste and Council's Parks and Reserves, including extensive walkways. In 1998, together with others, she set up WalkWellington, a local pedestrian advocacy group. This has since blossomed nationally into Living Streets Aotearoa (www.livingstreets.org.nz) , which provides significant input into Transport, Urban Design and Health policies at a national and local level. 2010 Celia has been elected Mayor of Wellington, Capital city of New Zealand.
Contact: Celia.Wade-Brown@livingstreets.org.nz
_____________________________________________________________________

Jim Walker (Great Britain) Walk21
Jim has been involved in managing and promoting access for more than 17 years. Jim is Director of Walk England, The Jubilee Walkway Trust, London Walking Forum and The Access Company. He is Chair of the Walk21 International Conference Series, Walk London and The Strategic Walk Partnership. Jim is Vice Chair and Communications Director for the European Union's "Walk Europe" Project, a Commissioner on the Board of The London Waterways Commission and an Enabler for the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment.
He has lived and worked in North America, New Zealand and Australia. He walked the circumference of Iceland following his degree in Environmental Management and has since helped develop trail networks in Chile and Australia. He is an active member of the European Greenways Association.
Contact: jim.walker@walk21.com
_____________________________________________________________________