A series of events celebrating the progress of biking in Minnesota will be hosted to commemorate progress in alternative transportation
March 23, 2023 (Minneapolis, MN) – Today, BikeMN announced the retirement of their founder and Executive Director, Dorian Grilley in July 2023. As a part of Dorian’s transition, BikeMN will co-host a “Founders’ Series” of events to bring the biking community together and raise funds to support education and advocacy around biking across Minnesota. The event series will feature BikeMN founding funders and supporters like Steve Flagg, founder, and Chairman of QBP, Erik Saltvold owner and CEO of ERIK’s Bike Shop, and Eric Hawkins, owner and President of Park Tool who will join Dorian in reflecting upon the progress and challenges of ensuring that every community in Minnesota has convenient, safe, and equitable access to walking and biking.
Originally founded in 2008 as the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota, BikeMN is a nonprofit statewide organization that strives to make walking and biking a frequent means of mobility within communities throughout Minnesota. Grilley was co-chair of the committee that founded the organization with a vision to provide leadership and a unified voice for bicycle education, advocacy, and efforts to make Minnesota a place where walking and biking are easy, safe, and fun for people of all backgrounds and abilities everywhere. That committee hired him as Executive Director.
“I am honored to have dedicated my career to advancing equity and access in biking across our state and beyond,” said Grilley, “I am proud to leave behind a strong organization that I truly believe in, with dedicated and thoughtful people at the helm who will usher in the next era of biking advocacy and education in Minnesota. Even though I will be stepping down as Executive Director, I’m still planning to volunteer with BikeMN as an advocate at the Capitol and advocate for active transportation on a part-time basis with our communities.”
BikeMN believes that everyone should have access to active mobility and that mobility puts human life and health first. To serve this mission, BikeMN uses three program areas: creating a safe path with Education so that road and trail users behave safely; creating an easy path with Advocacy so Minnesota implements walk and bike-friendly policies, programs, and infrastructure at all levels; creating a fun path with Community Engagement so that communities, businesses, and higher education institutions are walk- and bike- friendly.
Since BikeMN was founded in 2008, Minnesota has made critical advances in biking infrastructure and education. In the past 15 years, BikeMN has supported achievements like:
- Increasing the number of nationally ranked Bicycle Friendly Communities from one to 34 and more that have applied.
- The creation of the state-level Safe Routes to School and Active Transportation grant programs, to complement the federal programs, and ongoing lobbying for their funding.
- Creating an elementary and middle school safety curriculum called Walk! Bike! Fun! and partnering with MnDOT on its implementation. To date, more than 1,000 educators that are reaching more than 100,000 students per year have been trained.
- Helped create an Adult Learn to Ride Program and secured funding from the Metropolitan Council to implement it in low-income neighborhoods in the Metro Area.
“BikeMN has forever changed the state of biking in Minnesota,” said Erik Saltvold, of ERIK’s Bike Shop, “We are proud supporters of BikeMN and we are excited to celebrate the legacy Dorian is leaving and welcome a new chapter of education, advocacy, and leadership.”
To learn more about the upcoming events for the Founders’ Series, please visit: www.bikemn.org/all-events/founders-series/
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