Keynotes

Olatunji Oboi Reed

President & CEO, The Equiticity Racial Equity Movement

Olatunji Oboi Reed serves as the founding President & CEO of The Equiticity Racial Equity Movement. He works globally as a racial equity tactician, increased mobility advocate, and racial justice activist. Oboi’s passion lies at the intersection of community, culture, and health. With an extensive background in both nonprofit management and corporate social responsibility, he is most proud of his work to create a diverse coalition of people, organizations, and businesses all working together to achieve racial equity and mobility justice across the City of Chicago. Equiticity is a racial equity movement, operationalizing racial equity by harnessing our collective power through research, advocacy, programs, Community Mobility Rituals, and social enterprises, to improve the lives of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people in our society. Equiticity’s vision is a mid- to large-sized U.S. city where racial equity is fully integrated at the policy and legislative levels into every function, department, budget, and resource associated with the city’s operations, services, and programs. In 2015, Oboi was awarded The White House Transportation Champion of Change award by The White House and the United States Department of Transportation, under the administration of President Barack Obama. Oboi serves as Co-Chair of the Transportation Equity Network, Steering Committee Member of PolicyLink’s Transportation Equity Caucus, and Steering Committee Member of the Free To Move Coalition. Oboi is an appointee on the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning’s Regional Economy Committee. He is a member of the 2018 Grist Fixers Cohort, TransitCenter Foundation’s National Transit Justice Network, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights’ Justice Reform Task Force. Oboi previously served as a Community Member of the City of Chicago Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council and a member of the Board of Directors of Streetsblog Chicago. He is a frequent speaker, panelist, and facilitator at conferences around the world.

Pertinent Background

• Global racial equity strategist and tactician, 2015 United States White House Transportation Champion of Change award winner, and globally recognized racial equity strategist, tactician, advocate, and organizer, working across policy areas, sectors, and geographies.
• Innovative mobility justice advocate and practitioner, organizing neighborhood and citywide strategies to achieve racially equitable outcomes in the transportation sector, focused on all modes of travel – walking, cycling, driving, transit, shared mobility, micro mobility, and emerging transportation technologies.
• Impassioned racial justice activist, advocating and working at the nexus of mobility and enforcement, dismantling structural racism, removing racialized inequities, and improving life outcomes for racially marginalized groups.
• Community organizing expert, with over 25 years of experience; extensive background in both nonprofit management and corporate social responsibility; and significant tactical work at the neighborhood level integrating research, advocacy, programs, and community mobility rituals.

New Policies, New Systems, New Moves: Reimagining Transportation for Racially Marginalized Communities

Olatunji Oboi Reed is the founding President & CEO of The Equiticity Racial Equity Movement. Oboi will be discussing the vision and mission of Equiticity, and the organization’s work to operationalize racial equity, mobility justice, and environmental justice. Oboi will also discuss the work needed to reimagine transportation for racially marginalized communities. He will both challenge the status quo in the transportation sector and offer tactical solutions to solve for racialized transportation inequities and other compounding inequities across domains. Oboi’s presentation will push the transportation sector to reimagine itself and its purpose in our society, and recognize the urgent need to shift how the sector operates. 

Presented by 

Rob Johnson

SVP – Sustainability and Transportation, the Seattle Kraken and Climate Pledge Arena

After a career as a transit advocate, Rob was elected to be the first councilmember from Seattle’s Council District #4 a position he held from 2015 to 2019. While on the City Council he was responsible for passing sweeping zoning reform, creating $500M in funding for affordable housing funding, and ballot measures expanding light rail ($54B) and Pre-K ($600M) programs that were the largest investments in Seattle’s history. For the past 4.5 years he’s worked with the Seattle Kraken and Climate Pledge Arena as the SVP of Sustainability and Transportation. His work has been focused on ensuring the arena’s fans have a variety of easy and convenient transportation choices to get to arena events and to implement the sustainability goals required to be the first net zero carbon certified arena in the world.

Presented by