Speakers Corner Part I: Celebrating the future of cities

Ayikai is a Programme Director for Amend, which focusses on road safety across a number of African cities. She has a background in civil engineering with specialization in transport planning and traffic engineering. She has a passion for road safety and promoting thriving communities. Ayikai also has a keen interest in children and holds a diploma in Montessori early childhood education. She started her career working as a traffic/highway engineer for consultancies in the United Kingdom and Ghana. She joined the Amend team in 2015 as a Program Manager for the School Area Road Safety Assessments and Improvements (SARSAI) program in Tanzania and went on to set up the programme in Ghana. Ayikai currently directs Amend’s infrastructure programs across the organization and travels to project countries. Some of her current projects include pedestrian assessments on World Bank funded roads in Tanzania, and infrastructure improvements around schools in Botswana, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, Tanzania and Zambia. Ayikai holds professional membership with the Ghana Institution of Engineers (GhIE).

Lucy was formerly head of MaaS at CCAV and DfT. Her expertise covers new mobility services and business models, as well as disruptive technologies including driverless cars. She has formed part of the management teams of several technology start-ups, and is an early stage investor in the technology sector. She sits on the board of TravelSpirit, HackTrain and Ada, the national college for digital skills.

Areli Carreón is an environmentalist working to promote bike use as transportation in Mexico City since 1998, as part of Bicitekas. Currently she is the Bicycle Mayor of Mexico City.

I am a lawyer, mother and activist focused on the construction of spaces to improve the quality of life in cities through the promotion of active mobility with a gender lens. My foremost struggle has always been socio-environmental, which led me, in 2014, to found "Santa Fe en Bici": an organization that promotes urban cycling as an approach to improve the quality of life in my city; to co-found "Argentina en Bici": a similar organization with a national scope; and coordinate the Interactive Map of Harassment and Abuse in my city, putting in place a series of actions to show evidence of the problems associated with mobility, gender and public space. Since 2019, I am the Bicycle Mayor of Sante Fe, Argentina, through the program BYCS, an international NGO headquartered in Amsterdam that strives to reduce trips in motorized vehicles to mitigate the effects of climate change from carbon emissions. The objective of BYCS is that by 2030, 50% of all city trips will be taken by bicycle. Currently, along with a work team, I am part of the program Environment by Bike, which is part of the Sub-secretariat of Climate Change of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change of the province of Sante Fe, Argentina.

Will, a founding Director at Momentum, has delivered services across a diverse range of projects. He enjoys solving involved challenges in complex physical and political spaces. This has included delivering major international sports and entertainment venues, leading cultural institutions, and residential masterplans for likes of Stonehenge, MSG Sphere and London Stadium.