Global Perspectives: Lessons in Sustainable Urban Delivery

Russ Brooks is a Mobility Planner for the Minneapolis Department of Public Works. He is responsible for the City’s Mobility Hub project and assists with the shared bike and scooter program. Before joining the city, was the Director of Smart Cities for Transportation for America. In 2016, Russ created and launched the Smart Cities Collaborative – a peer to peer learning network to bring together leading-edge cities to explore how technology can improve urban mobility and tackle the challenges related to advancing smart mobility policies and projects.

Michael Schwartz has more than 20 years of experience implementing and overseeing teams working on data-driven transportation plans, policies, and infrastructure. He is currently the General Manager of City Products at INRIX, including Ride Report shared mobility management, Curb Analytics, and the Road Rules software suite. As the former CEO Ride Report, Michael grew the company from its pre-revenue phase to more than 75 customers of shared mobility management software and a footprint in more than 100 shared mobility markets across three continents around the world.

Jacob Sherman is the New Mobility and Electrification Section Manager at the Portland Bureau of Transportation. He leads a team focused on private-sector partnerships, shared mobility strategy, regulatory innovation, and transportation electrification, which are core to the City’s climate goals. Jacob manages PBOT’s $2M SMART Grant to pilot the nation’s first regulated Zero-Emission Delivery Zone, its $3.5M grant to install EV chargers in the right-of-way, and its strategy on mobility data. He also managed the City’s E-Scooter Pilot Program. Outside of work, Jacob serves as Chair of the City of Milwaukie, Oregon’s Planning Commission.  

Karen Vancluysen was appointed as Secretary General of POLIS in 2014, after having been the network's Research Director for 10 years. Prior to that, she worked at ACCESS-Eurocities and Langzaam Verkeer. Since 1998, Karen has been involved in European urban transport networking and policy activities, and European urban mobility research projects. She has been a speaker and moderator at many high-level events in Europe and beyond, on a wide range of urban mobility themes from the perspective of cities and the governance of innovation. POLIS is the leading European network of cities and regions on urban transport innovation.