It’s been a year since Ellee Thalheimer and I co-founded the Portland Society, a business alliance for bicycling women.
In that year, we’ve grown to about 35 members (plus another dozen or so people who are more loosely involved), earned some nice words from the local news media, had amazing monthly meetings, given away $1,000 in professional development grants (through a partnership with Umbrella, and raised five times that amount to give away in the next six months for the purpose of developing local leadership in active transportation.
Portland’s transportation department has a Bicycle Brown Bag Lunch series each month, where city staff and the general public can come hear someone speak about their bicycling area of expertise. We were invited to present about Portland Society last week; Ellee was out of town, so I went it alone, bolstered by a long list of statistics about gender, bicycling, and the economy, and by the hard-won experience that public speaking becomes less painful in proportion to the effort you make not to look as nervous as you feel.
Joe came along and filmed it, then cut the hour down to its essential 11 minutes. Enjoy!
Elly Blue @ PBOT Brown Bag! from Cantankerous Titles on Vimeo.