Officers
Stephan Vance – Chair
Stephan Vance has been a Bike Coalition Board member since 1996. He also served on the Board of the California Bike Collation from 1998 to 2017. Stephan retired in 2018 from a 36-year career with the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) where he worked in a variety of transportation and land use planning areas, but his primary focus was on active transportation. He helped developed design guidelines, oversaw grant funding programs that promoted bicycle and pedestrian travel, and helped develop a variety of major regions bike projects, including the Bayshore Bikeway, Coastal Rail Trail, Inland Rail Trail, and San Diego River Trail. Now that he’s retired, he’s riding his bike more for recreation. When time permits, Stephan enjoys bike touring and has toured a variety of locations around the country.
Stephan is also the interim chair of the Advocacy Committee.
Diem Do – Vice Chair
Diem Do was born in Vietnam and has resided in San Diego for more than 20 years. She began cycling in 1999 as a volunteer fundraiser for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and has since done similar fundraising for many organizations and charities. Via her education and profession, Diem has been dedicated to promoting and developing healthy communities, which includes planning and constructing programs and facilities whereby all residents have access to multi-modal transportation opportunities, physical activity and nutrition, and safe and healthy homes. She looks forward to working with SDCBC to further its goals of making bicycling a key component of creating a livable and healthy San Diego.
Diem is also the chair of the SDCBC Membership Committee.
Keith Fuller – Treasurer
Keith Fuller and his wife Gail have been residents of the San Diego community of Tierrasanta since 1991, having moved there from upstate New York. Keith had been an avid long-distance runner for many years, but has now fully transitioned to bicycle riding, which is easier on the knees. Keith is involved in a variety of activities and organizations, including the Tierrasanta Kiwanis.
Keith is retired after a long and varied management career in the energy industry. Keith has been a member of the Knickerbikers for about 15 years, and he occasionally rides with the Major Taylor club as well as a club in New York State.
Melina Lasley – Secretary
Melina Cunha works for the City of San Diego’s Sustainability Department where she implements the Climate Action Plan to reduce climate change-causing emissions while improving the daily lives of San Diegans. She is especially interested in the transportation sector and wants to improve the bike infrastructure in San Diego by adding more protected bike lanes and empowering more people to use a bike for whatever they choose, while focusing on equity and those who have been historically underserved. In her free time, Melina likes to get outside and explore everything San Diego has to offer, whether that is on a bike ride through her neighborhood, hiking through the many trails, walking around Mission Bay, or cultivating her small garden patio. She also volunteers for the Birch Aquarium where she loves to educate visitors about marine life and conservation at the aquarium and on whale watching tours.
Committee Chairs
Jacob Mandel – Advocacy Chair
Richard Opper – Bike Center Project
Richard has been a cyclist most of his life, and he shares a great passion for both the activity and the history of cycling with his wife. Retired now, he worked as a lawyer, specializing in environmental law for the past several decades in San Diego. Richard appreciates the opportunity to help the Coalition achieve its goals. He believes that the Coalition has much promise for cyclists, and that a rebirth of the golden age of cycling may lie before us.
Myles Pomeroy – Council of Bicycle Clubs
Myles is a retired urban planner who had a 23 year career with the City of San Diego and 15 years previously with the City of St. Louis. He rode his bike to work virtually every day in San Diego. He continues to ride recreationally several times a week. His professional background and continuing cycling activity means that he advocates for making San Diego more transit oriented and more bicycle and pedestrian friendly. Accordingly, Myles wants to promote a more compact development pattern for San Diego and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He currently serves as the Sierra Club Bike Section representative on the SDCBC Board.
Jim Baross – Education
Jim has served as Chair of the San Diego Regional Association of Governments (SANDAG) Bicycle Pedestrian Working Group; Vice-Chair of the Department of Transportation’s California Bicycle Advisory Committee and as President of the City of San Diego Retired Employee Association. He presently serves as Co-lead for the California Strategic Highway Safety Plan, Bicycling Challenge Area 13; and as President of the California Association of Bicycle Organizations; as well as Vice Chair of the Normal Heights Community Planning Group.
Katie Crist – Governance
Katie Crist, PhD, MPH, is a public health researcher at the University of California, San Diego. She is interested in working with transportation planners, decision makers and advocates to help create vibrant communities that support health, equity and opportunities to be more physically active in our everyday lives. Her research interests include evaluating how the built environment and transport infrastructure impact health and travel behavior and the delivery of programs to increase biking, walking and transit use. She gets to work, and most places, by bike so is well aware of the challenges to non-vehicle travel in our region. She has been engaged with the Coalition since 2012, serving as the Chair of multiple committees and Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors.
Diem Do – Outreach + Equity
Diem Do was born in Vietnam and has resided in San Diego for more than 20 years. She began cycling in 1999 as a volunteer fundraiser for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and has since done similar fundraising for many organizations and charities. Via her education and profession, Diem has been dedicated to promoting and developing healthy communities, which includes planning and constructing programs and facilities whereby all residents have access to multi-modal transportation opportunities, physical activity and nutrition, and safe and healthy homes. She looks forward to working with SDCBC to further its goals of making bicycling a key component of creating a livable and healthy San Diego.
Diem is also the chair of the SDCBC Vice Chair.
Denice Williams – Outreach + Equity
Denice Williams has been a cyclist in San Diego for the past 30 years. She joined the SDCBC board in 2017. As a League of American Bicyclists Certified Instructor she leads group rides, bike rodeos and maintenance workshops all over San Diego County. Denice is on the SDCBC’s Council of Bicycle Clubs Committee and she is a “co-shero” for the San Diego Chapter of Black Girls Do Bike, a national group that inspires women of color to get outside and ride bikes.
Members At Large
Amanda Bekele
Amanda is a Procurement Manager at Illumina. She serves on two Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), SHADES and iPride, which are employee formed and managed groups that deliver career development experiences and increase cultural awareness. She also served on a Corporate Relations Committee for the Human Rights Campaign-Austin and was an AT&T ERG Board Member for their Pride group. Amanda recently moved to San Diego a year and a half ago from Austin and has a passion to promote cycling road safety and community outreach. Amanda loves to bike and understands it is a great tool for independence, transportation and health of the body and mind and wants to help people discover and enjoy biking too!
Dorothy “Dorrie” Bruggemann
Dorrie has lived in San Diego for a year and a half, and does work in
voter outreach and community organizing. She has many memories of
bicycling while growing up in Iowa, and enjoyed bicycling as her main
form of transportation while living abroad in Spain for several years.
Returning to the States and moving to San Diego allowed her to
realize the extent to which cars are prioritized in our transportation
systems. After living here over a year, she still finds herself sometimes
afraid to explore new areas on her bike due to safety concerns. She
sought out SDCBC in the hopes of helping create a San Diego where
people from all walks of life can get around safely and comfortably
using their bicycles, and where bicycling as a means of transport is
viable across the entire city. As a board member, Dorrie will represent
young, female, and casual bicyclists, and those who want all people
and communities to be able to share the joy of bicycling!
Krishna Curry
Alexandra (Alex) Flores
Beryl Forman
Upon moving to San Diego 16 years ago, Beryl Forman became immediately interested
in the amount of new development, and had a strong desire to stay and watch the city
redevelop. Before long, Beryl began working for the El Cajon Blvd BIA, and was given
the title ‘Ms. Boulevard’ by the North Park News. Beryl dedicated much of her career to
this local business association and recently transitioned into a consulting role focused
on Placemaking & Mobility.
Beryl has worked on significant projects in San Diego including the development of a
culturally designated Little Saigon District, placemaking initiatives including Take Back
the Alley and Fair@44, implementing tactical transit solutions including a pilot dedicated
bus/bike lane, and is currently focused on implementing painted crosswalks and other
street safety enhancements, as well as a community lead tree planting initiative.
Beryl strongly believes that city planning is a tool to create positive change, which is
why she focused her graduate thesis on the Cross Border Region, titled ‘Bi-National
Placemaking and Implementation’. Through dedication and hard work, Beryl was
recently named one of Daily Transcript’s Influential Women for 2019 and 2019 40 Under
40 by SD Metro.
Daniel Gaytan
Daniel was born and raised in the South Bay of San Diego county. His passion for cycling connected him with the bike coalition and their mission. Daniel is a public policy and advocacy professional with experience working for government and nonprofit entities in San Diego, Washington DC, Orange County, and LA County. He hopes to use his experience in policy and grassroots advocacy to further the mission of the bike coalition to make all of San Diego County a friendlier place for cyclists of all levels.
Kirie Hodges
I don’t remember my first baby steps. However, I vividly recall the first time I successfully rode my bike without training wheels. Some of my earliest memories are of riding with my dad in a child’s bike seat as we rode around with my mom and sister as a unit. When I was an adolescent, my cousin and I used to spend our summer days riding miles around the neighborhood. We rode until the tires were flat, and then we learned how to patch and change a tube. Although I wasn’t one of those kids, I used to admire the students who rode their bikes to school.
Nowadays, as an adult and a proud parent of a six year-old boy, we ride our bikes (metal horses) daily. My son can echo the ABC’s of biking (Air, Brake and Chain) and he knows how to safely ride his bike. We ride together all the time, and while keeping our heads on a swivel, we see that we have inspired others to ride their bikes too.
David Leyva
David Leyva is a news producer for CBS 8, and a three-year San Diego resident. His passion for cycling was something he inadvertently stumbled upon after getting into a car accident. He resorted to a used bike from craigslist to get to work, and quickly fell in love with the long commute and the freedom of being on a bike. Although he got a new car, cycling became his favorite way to get around, and soon ventured into longer and more adventurous rides. Today, he rides primarily for leisure and is always on the lookout for fun and creative ways to get around San Diego. As a board member, he hopes to help address the needs of cyclists who ride for fun and those who use bicycles as a primary source of transportation, especially in underserved communities.
Dave Nichols
David would like to create an environment that encompasses and supports all areas of cycling, and prepares our community for generations to come as we enter into a new era of safe cycling for all ages, all abilities, all cycling passions.
Moline Shrader-Nelson
Linda Webb
Linda has been riding San Diego county roads for over 50 years. Her earliest bike memory is watching the 1962 Tour de France with her father, then organizing races with the neighborhood kids. Her interest in cycling led her to become president of the San Diego chapter of AYH (American Youth Hostels), a recreational cycling club in the 1980’s. She was a bike commuter for 40 years. She served on the Board of the San Diego Bicycle Club for many years and is a regular development ride leader whose goal is to develop safe, confident, competent road cyclists.
Club and Organization Members
Ken Chin-Purcell – North County Cycle Club
Paul Gorman – CycloVets
Wil Hardin – Major Taylor Cycling Club
Will rides with Major Taylor Cycling Club.
Serge Issakov – San Diego Bicycle Club
Serge Issakov has been a member of the Coalition board representing the San Diego Bicycle Club since 2004. He chaired the Council of Clubs previously and is currently vice chair. Member of Advocacy committee. Serge is a League Certified Instructor. He also sits on San Diego’s Mobility Board representing District 1, and serves as Secretary on the board of the California Association of Bicycling Organizations. Serge is skeptical about the effectiveness of most bike infrastructure in terms of significantly increasing ridership and improving actual rider safety. He believes more emphasis on education and marketing good traffic cycling skills and practices would be far more effective at making cycling safer, more enjoyable and more attractive for anyone 8-80. He would like to see more emphasis on getting the 2% of the population that does 90% of the riding to use bikes more for commuting and other utilitarian trips.
Howard La Grange – Bike/Walk Alliance
Howard has been an active cyclist for over 60 years and a member of the Coalition since 2005. He continues to promote active transportation currently working as the Active Transportation and Micromobility Coordinator for the City of Oceanside. A League Cycling Instructor since 2000, he teaches Smart Cycling classes and holds bike education rodeos for elementary schools. He has worked with the Coalition to form local advocacy organizations (BikeWalks) to promote active transportation in their communities. The goal is to have the regional BikeWalks work with their local municipalities in promoting biking and planning bike facilities.
Jaimie Lynch – Challenged Athletes
Jaimie is the cycling events and fundraising manager for Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF). She thrives off of helping others and has an enormous passion for giving back.
Jaimie has been running cycling events and cycling herself for over 6 years. It was through her previous employer she developed a passion for cycling and now gets to incorporate her love for the sport with her job.
Originally from Iowa, Jaimie decided shortly after college that the cold weather wasn’t for her and immediately moved to San Diego. With her free time, you’ll catch her indulging in all the good food San Diego has to offer, riding her bike, jogging by the ocean, or spending time with friends.
Monte Murbach – The Turtles
Monte Murbach is a registered geologist and certified engineering geologist with over 30 years experience in engineering geology. He has conducted numerous soil, rock and foundation investigations as well as geologic hazard, seismic, and landslide evaluations for clients throughout the western United States and Baja California, Mexico. Mr. Murbach is an active member of various geologic societies in the western United States.
Dan Orr- Blind Stokers
Dan Orr has been with the SDCBC since 2019. He has served the City of Coronado on their ad hoc Bicycle Committee and, for eight years, he has been on the Coronado Bicycle Advisory Committee. Dan is a retired marketing rep and he referees high school and college club volleyball. He is interested in protecting and promoting the rights and responsibilities of the avid cyclist.
Dan also represents the Blind Stokers’ Club and the Crown City Cyclists (Coronado).
Mark Semancsin – Bike Buddies
I am an ex runner and running coach that can no longer run. Now, after retiring from a management career, I enjoy cycling, working out at the gym, Pilates, Yoga, all to stay in shape. Due to gyms being closed and less activities from Covid 19, in the first 10 months of 2020, I rode over 11,000 miles with 650,000 ft of climbing on my bike. My greatest recent achievement was a solo, unsupported ride of 208 miles in one day in June, averaging over 15mph. I’m fulfilled from leading rides for the Bike Buddies Cycle Club. I enjoy the company from other riders while participating in physical activity.
Committees & Meetings
The San Diego County Bicycle Coalition’s board of directors and committees meet regularly. If you are interested in getting involved with one of our committees, please reach out to the chairperson.
Board of Directors
sdcbc-board@googlegroups.com
The full board of directors meets every 4th Wednesday in January, April, July, October
Executive Committee
sdcbc-executive-committee@sdbikecoalition.org
Meets every 4th Wednesday, monthly at 6:30pm on Zoom
Governance Committee
sdcbc_governance-committee@googlegroups.com
Meets as needed on Zoom
Education Committee
sdcbc-education-committee@sdbikecoalition.org
Meets every 4th Thursday on odd months at 7pm on Zoom.
Advocacy Committee
sdcbc-advocacy@googlegroups.com
Meets every 2nd Wednesday on odd months at 7pm on Zoom
Membership Committee
sdcbc-membership-committee@sdbikecoalition.org
Meets on the 3rd Wednesday of even month at 6pm on Zoom
Council of Clubs
sdcbc-council-of-clubs@sdbikecoalition.org
Meets on the 3rd Wednesday of odd months at 6pm on Zoom
Outreach & Equity Committee
sdcbc-equity-outreach@googlegroups.com
Meets on the 2nd Monday of even months at 6:30pm on Zoom
