About the Board

Kristi Rennenohm Franz
Kristi is an educator with a lifelong focus on community activism, environmental sustainability and youth empowerment.  She has many motivations for wanting to serve on the board: as a teacher, she is committed to building bicycle education in our schools and throughout our communities; as a senior citizen and grandmother of five, she personifies the current movement of building bicycle infrastructure that accommodates ‘all ages & abilities’; as a citizen of Seattle, she is committed to seeing Seattle replicate communities in our country and around the world where bicycling is actively supported as an environmentally sustainable and economically affordable mode of transportation. 

Allegra Calder, chair of the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board, lives in Eastlake and is a senior policy analyst at BERK & Associates. At BERK, she works on a variety of strategic planning, financial, and policy analysis, projects for state and local governments, and other local and regional organizations.  A lifelong cyclist and former bike tour guide who has cycled in more than 25 countries, she is passionate about making Seattle a safe and attractive place for cyclists.

Jodi Connolly is a West Seattle resident and regular bike commuter to downtown.  She coordinates the "Getting there" transportation resource center for King County Residents with special needs.  Her combined interest in cycling, public transportation, and mobilizing people around the community has led to a desire to serve on the Bicycle Advisory Board.  She is interested in both infrastructure and education for safe behaviors and visibility of all roadway users.  She and her husband enjoy mountain bike and cyclocross racing and playing on bikes with their two kids.

Matthew Crane has been a practicing attorney for more than 20 years in Seattle.  As a daily bicycle commuter, Matt sees bicycling as a nearly perfect transportation choice that is good not only for one’s health and budget, but also the environment, local and global. For Matt, safety is a paramount issue, as more and more city residents take up bicycling for the joys of transportation and recreation.

Jessica Szelag
Jessica, vice chair, is an outgoing and enthusiastic individual with a passion for both serving her community and bicycling.  She has been working in the field of providing transportation options for over five years, first as a manager for Zipcar and currently as the program manager for Commute Seattle.  Her experience managing and communicating complex policies and procedures, evaluating various transportation solutions, and working with diverse stakeholders has prepared her extremely well to serve on the Bicycle Advisory Board.  Jessica also actively serves as secretary for the Seattle 2030 District Board.

Gabe Grijalva has been an avid cyclists since the early 1980's, beginning when he commuted to college, the University of Arizona, on flat and dry roads.  Gabe continues to make cycling part of his life with both commuting and recreational cycling here in Seattle as much as he can.  He lives in Capital Hill and commutes regularly into downtown.  Gabe is self-employed, Grijalva Engineering, as a transportation/traffic engineer and through his work is dedicated to promoting and providing best planning and design practices to support  walking and bicycling and account for a balanced and safe design for pedestrians and bicyclists on all projects he works on.

Clint Loper
Bio coming soon

Alfonso Lopez
Alfonso is a multi-modal commuter who rides his bicycle year-round for transportation and recreation.  He attributes his overall physical and mental health to bike riding, and along with the cost savings he has experienced by bicycling for transportation, has morphed into an advocate in hopes that other Seattleites may too experience the many benefits cycling has to offer.  As a frequent cyclist, he is familiar with many areas of the city and has a firsthand knowledge of the highlights and shortcomings of Seattle’s bicycle infrastructure.

Neal Komedal is a retired laborer who worked for the City of Seattle.  He has lived in North Rainier Valley for 37 years. He started commuting by bicycle in 1970.  Born and raised in (then-) rural Port Madison, he has always been leery of cars, but fond of machinery.

Cecilia Roussel
Cecilia's once uneasy relationship to cycling became closer to second-nature with her move into Seattle's bicycle-friendly infrastructure in the fall of 2011. A recent graduate of the University of Michigan's Master of Architecture program, she holds a long-standing conviction in the significance of design to our experience of the built environment. She now commutes daily along the Burke-Gilman and would like to see the whole city have access to a commute as sustainable, healthy, safe, and embarrassingly blissful as hers. 

Dylan Ahearn
Dylan is an associate water quality scientist at Herrera, Inc. and Geology Instructor at Edmonds Community College, is a utilitarian cyclist who views bikes simply as a tool to increase our walksheds.  He joined the board to advocate for all ages active transportation and to advocate against the outdated concepts of urban vehicular cycling. Dylan is also on the boards of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and Beacon BIKES and serves as a liaison between all of these groups. During the day Dylan enjoys riding bikes around Beacon Hill with his two children, at night he works to make it safer for them to do so.

Jean White has been bike commuter for over 10 years from the North End to downtown. Her goal is to help see that the Bicycle Master Plan is implemented and biking is made safer and more accessible for more people in Seattle.  As lead for implementing a salmon recovery plan for the Lake Washington watershed, she knows something about plan implementation and how to work with local governments.