Benjamin de Peña

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT BENJAMIN DE PEÑA

Benjamin de la Peña is the CEO of the Shared-Use Mobility Center, a public-interest organization dedicated to achieving equitable, affordable, and environmentally sound mobility across the US. He also chairs the Global Network for Popular Transportation and is a Senior Fellow on Mobility for the Canadian Urban Institute. He founded the boutique consulting firm Agile City Partners; served on the board of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy; and on the US Advisory Group of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. Benjie has Masters in Urban Planning degree from Harvard University\'s Graduate School of Design.Benjie served as Chief of Strategy and Innovation for the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) where he led the development of ground-breaking and nationally recognized technology and mobility strategies such as Seattle’s New Mobility Playbook and the draft Transportation Information Infrastructure Plan. He initiated lean transformation and also introduced agile methodologies at SDOT. He spent nearly a decade in philanthropy working on urban and transportation issues in the US and across the Global South.Benjie writes and curates Makeshift Mobility, a fortnightly newsletter on innovations in informal transportation. He served on the advisory committees for L.A.’s Transportation Technology Strategy, the Mobiprize, and Cooper Hewitt Museum’s The Road Ahead: Reimagining Mobility. He’s worked on urban development issues that cover technology, transportation, and informality. His ideas have been featured in Citylab, Atlantic Cities, Next City, FutureEverything, and TED City 2.0. He believes the emerging transportation technologies should serve as critical leverage points for correcting societal wrongs and dismantling racism and injustice.