One year after the launch of the TravelSpirit Community, TravelSpirit Foundation has strengthened its senior leadership team, with two new appointments to its Global Executive. These appointments form part of an important update to the TravelSpirit governance structure.
The changes will enable the organisation to better communicate and accelerate its mission to provide an open framework for integrated mobility and universally accessible services.
TravelSpirit Foundation is now governed by a Global Executive team of four Execs and two non-execs. This team are charged with delivering the Foundation’s Strategic Plan. They are supported by autonomous Regional Market Development Boards, who define and deliver mobility programmes through local partnerships.
The UK Market Development Board has been in place for the last 6 months and has already delivered a series of key outcomes, including thought leadership position papers and an Index of Openness for cities and transport operators, to be released next week. Other Regional Boards, in Europe and Asia, are in the progress of being set up.
Giles Bailey is the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer and Beate Kubitz the new Chief Operating Officer. They join Chairman Si Ho and Chief Technology Officer Jeremy Dalton. Existing team members, Alex Burrows from Alstom Transport UK and Lucy Yu from the Department for Transport will remain on the Board as non-exec directors, to advise on strategic and policy matters.
Giles Bailey said: “It is a great honour to take up the role of CEO of TravelSpirit. One of the key roles of the Executive team will be to reach out to innovators and foundations who are in tune with our message and want to work with us. Together we can change the otherwise default view of new mobility with a more sustainable and effective view of the open Internet of Mobility”.
Giles was previously the TravelSpirit UK Regional Board Chair and has over 25 years of experience in managing transport and innovation within Transport for London, with his own consultancy, Stratageeb, and as a Warwick University lecturer and writer.
Beate Kubitz moves from Director of Communications and Policy, TravelSpirit UK Regional Board, to the role of Chief Operating Officer. Beate’s background is in communications and campaigning in the third sector, including for Carplus Bikeplus. She is currently authoring the first Annual Survey of Mobility as a Service, which will be published this summer by Landor.
Beate said: “The scope and breadth of this role is both exciting and daunting at the same time. In my first 100 days I want to building on our “open or closed?” whitepaper, by shortly releasing the TravelSpirit Openness Index and following up in July with a thought provoking whitepaper on Autonomy – the implications of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence for Urban Mobility. I’ll also be developing our conference and events programme – crucial, in my view, to bringing everyone together on this globally relevant agenda”.
Chairman Si Ho added: “The organisation is also looking to grow our UK Project Board with new members. This is the team that delivers TravelSpirit’s programme of activity within the UK market and already consists of an exciting and dynamic mix of local authorities, academia, SME’s and representatives of larger commercial and non-commercial organisations. Please do get in touch with us to explore how you could be part of this team.”
The TravelSpirit Foundation was established in Manchester in 2016 to provide an open framework for the provision of new mobility services. To successfully achieve our ambitious aims for the emerging mobility sphere – within the UK and across the globe – we set out to build a global network of transport operators, software developers, businesses, policy.
CTO, Jeremy Dalton said: “I am delighted to see how far we’ve come, already, since I flew in to join the team last September. With the four of us in place we can begin to make further in roads. My focus is on our Open Innovation Programme. It is designed to generate resilient solutions to known mobility challenges. We shepherd innovative ideas through a project pipeline that leverages experience, skills exchange, open source tools and assets from the TravelSpirit community. We want to build on what we achieved at Hackout Manchester (see video here) and want to hear from other cities around the globe who want to join the programme.”
Naturally, this global network is diverse, featuring a range of entities with different aims and objectives, so we are united by our four core values:
· Universal Mobility as a Service: We believe that an integrated, connected, multi-modal MaaS system provides the needed path to sustainable and equitable transportation for all people and communities.
· Open Innovation: We believe in an open innovation model, that rewards sharing of information that serves others, even our competitors, and brings benefits to all.
· Global Community: We believe that by connecting coders, planners, activists, and policymakers through a global network, we are better equipped to tackle the toughest mobility and transport challenges.
· Local Benefit: We believe that our work must be grounded in its ability to demonstrate positive change by and for local communities and regions.
For further information please contact info@travelspirit.io or message one of the global team (Si Ho, Giles Bailey, Beate Kubitz, Jeremy Dalton) on social media.