Inevitable Ep 56: Melinda Hanson, Head of Sustainability at Bird
Today’s guest is Melinda Hanson, Head of Sustainability at Bird, a micromobility company based in Santa Monica, CA. Founded in September 2017, Bird operates shared electric scooters in over 100 cities in Europe, the Middle East, and North America, with 10 million rides in its first year of operation.
Melinda joined Bird from the National Association of City Transportation Officials, where she served as deputy director of NACTO's international programs. Before that, Melinda was a consultant for the Asian Development Bank, helping design and implement public transit projects in Pakistan and the Philippines. Earlier in her career, she was a founding staff member of the ClimateWorks Foundation where she managed the sustainable transport portfolio.
In today’s episode, we cover:
- An overview of Bird
- How Melinda became interested in sustainability and micromobility
- Car culture, and some of the challenges inhibiting cities from changing
- The rise of e-scooters (and why)
- How Bird is different, relative to competition
- Melinda’s charter as head of sustainability
- Their progress to-date, and some examples of key learnings
- The value prop Bird offers to cities, and how the cities tend to evaluate the decision'
- Some barriers inhibiting progress, and the most impactful things that could change to accelerate their efforts
- What success looks like at Bird, from a sustainability standpoint
- What else matters in the climate fight
- Melinda’s advice for others trying to figure out how to help
Links to topics discussed in this episode:
- Bird: https://www.bird.co/
- Melinda’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melinda-hanson-6384912/
- ClimateWorks Foundation: https://www.climateworks.org/
- Barr Foundation: https://www.barrfoundation.org/
- Travis VanderZanden: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis1/
- NYC’s Green Wave Plan: https://ny.curbed.com/2019/8/19/20812178/regional-planning-association-rpa-protected-bike-lane
- Quick Builds for Better Streets: https://b.3cdn.net/bikes/675cdae66d727f8833_kzm6ikutu.pdf
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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant