Sustainable Mobility: 7 Inspiring People to Follow

For World Bicycle Day, and to celebrate the release of our eco-mobility scenario, we decided to put together a list of people to follow if you want to understand everything about sustainable mobility. Researchers, filmmakers, authors... They all do different things, but they share the same goal: raising awareness of sustainable mobility!

Jérôme ZINDY: bike reporter, host and environmental filmmaker

Jérôme ZINDY is a filmmaker who specializes in the environment. In 2019, he became aware of the negative impact of his professional and personal activities. In 2020, he decided to leave his job in automotive events to devote himself to the ecological transition. From then on, he set out to meet people who care about the environment and made videos about them. With his recordings, he showcases everyone's sustainable initiatives while promoting cycling. Whether aboard a solar bike that produces its own energy or a folding electric bike to carry his equipment, he discovers a new way of getting around every time. Our bike reporter has a motto: "Talk about the environment without impacting the environment myself."
His choices confirm it:

• No flights since 2019
• As much cycling and public transport as possible since 2020 (2,315 kg of CO2 avoided during his bike reports)
• Locavore since 2020, vegetarian since 2022

But what projects has Jérôme worked on?

• More than 140 bike reports produced!
• He co-wrote "Transmettre" (Passing It On) with Marie Balthazard, a film made to question the future of the farming world
• Winter 2024: "La nouvelle aventure mobile" (The New Mobile Adventure) with ADEME, a tour of France in an intermediate vehicle to discover new forms of mobility.
• May 2024: he followed all the events of "Mai à Vélo" (May by Bike) for the second year in a row! Jérôme supported this awareness campaign, notably by publishing many episodes.

What's next?

This summer 2024, Jérôme ZINDY should create new reports, this time meeting organic farming players in Nouvelle-Aquitaine.

Thank you, Jérôme, for these refreshing formats!

Laure Wagner: CEO of "1km à Pied"

Laure Wagner understood the importance of sustainable mobility from the very start. In 2009, she joined the 3 founders of Blablacar, becoming their first employee. After working for 11 years at Blablacar as head of communications and spokesperson, Laure decided to found 1km à Pied (1km on Foot). The company works for eco-mobility because it reduces commutes. Concretely, Laure and her team built HR software that can diagnose the existing commutes among employees. Above all, it helps multi-site employers identify employees who could do the same job closer to home.

The platform is divided into 4 modules:

1. A module to promote employer mobility plans: bikes, carpooling...
2. An internal recruitment module: as soon as a position opens at one of the sites, employers get a list of employees who would live closer to work if they took that position.
3. A module to record mobility wishes.
4. A module to see swaps between equivalent positions.

On average, the software cuts the home-to-work distance from 15 to 5 km. For Laure, it makes it possible to "make people happy while avoiding CO2"!

Laure Wagner has given many talks and interviews, and is also very active on LinkedIn!

Stein VAN OOSTEREN: diplomat and author on eco-mobility

This Franco-Dutchman is proof that you can live several lives at once! He is both attached to the Netherlands' delegation to UNESCO and an author and speaker on transition topics such as mobility. After studying psychology and philosophy in the Netherlands, he decided to settle in Fontenay-aux-Roses (92), where he did not forget his home country, the paradise of cycling! In 2017, he founded the association FARàVélo to make Fontenay-aux-Roses a bike-friendly city. He also took part in creating the Collectif Vélo Île-de-France, which today brings together more than 8,000 members in 42 associations. After moving into project management, he discovered a passion for writing, again focused on eco-mobility.

He published "Pourquoi pas le vélo ? Envie d'une France cyclable" (Why Not Cycling? Longing for a Bike-Friendly France) in 2021. In this essay, with his Dutch point of view and plenty of humor, he knocks down the barriers to cycling and shows us all its benefits! Plenty of arguments in favor of using a bicycle lead us to the next question: "So why not cycling?"

In 2023, he published "50 bonnes raisons de faire du vélo" (50 Good Reasons to Ride a Bike). According to the author, cycling is not a matter of morality; on the contrary, it is a story of feelings. The point is not to force people onto a bicycle but to feed the desire to do it, through sentimental and artistic texts that evoke the well-being cycling brings.

It is always a pleasure to hear Stein VAN OOSTEREN talk passionately about the Réseau Express Vélo (REVe), which he calls the "RER Vélo" (the bike express network, like the Paris regional rail)!

Marie CHÉRON: vehicle policy manager

During her end-of-studies internship in Vietnam, a country "in transition," Marie discovered very different ways of living and thinking. On the road, motorbikes, women on foot, and the first cars becoming common... That is where she understood how much the road drives social and spatial reorganization, and where she began to take an interest in mobility.

She went on to work for more than six years as mobility manager at the Fondation pour la Nature et l'Homme. There, she took part in advocacy on the LOM (France's mobility orientation law)! She also carried out a life-cycle analysis of electric vehicles and built a link with unions to question employment in the shift to electric cars.

In 2022, she became vehicle policy manager at T&E France, an office whose goal is to develop a decarbonized transport system by 2050 that protects human health and is affordable for everyone.

Marie Chéron posts frequently on LinkedIn about eco-mobility.

Aurélien BIGO: researcher on the energy transition of transport

With his 41,000 followers on LinkedIn, you have probably heard of him! Aurélien BIGO is an independent researcher associated with the Energy and Prosperity chair run by the Institut Louis Bachelier. After finishing his master's degree in environmental economics, in 2020 he defended the thesis "Transport facing the challenge of the energy transition. Explorations between past and future, technology and sobriety, acceleration and slowdown" (translated from French). He then worked on ADEME's Transition(s) 2050 scenarios.

Alongside this, Aurélien Bigo also published the book VOITURES - Fake or not? in May 2023 with Tana Editions. Looking at the issue through the lens of the car, the book aims to make the stakes of the transition easy to understand and to raise awareness. Even though we seem to be building a future based on electric, Aurélien thinks that "The future of the car is electric, but the individual car is not the future of our mobility," a message he gets across in his book.

You can also find him on many YouTube channels, where he often speaks to clarify points about mobility. Aurélien's talks are ideal for understanding the stakes of more sustainable mobility. We recommend his talk "Quelles transitions pour nos mobilités d'ici 2050 ?" (What transitions for our mobility by 2050?, in French).

Florence Gall: general delegate of the bicycle sector at APIC

Before taking a closer interest in cycling, Florence Gall worked for 15 years in urban planning! She worked as a study officer at APUR and SEMGERS and ended her career in this sector as deputy delegate of the FNAU (the national federation of urban planning agencies). Today, she is general delegate of the bicycle sector at the Association de promotion et d'identification des cycles de la mobilité active (APIC). By the bicycle sector, we mean all the economic activities around the bicycle. Her mission is to help the French cycling economy shine through production, distribution, but also cycle tourism and any type of activity derived from cycling.
Florence was also a candidate in the first round of the March 2020 municipal elections in Vincennes with the Vincennes plus list, in favor of the ecological transition.

She is often invited to discuss sustainable mobility, as was the case, for example, at the Rencontres du Vélo et des Mobilités Douces in Marseille on May 25, 2023. She notably hosts many round tables on the benefits of cycling.

If you want to know everything about the bicycle, we recommend following her on LinkedIn, since she dedicates all her posts to it!

Baptiste LEMAITRE: author of the documentary Les Roues de l'Avenir

Baptiste LEMAITRE also champions soft mobility. His leitmotiv: make everyone want to get on a bike! He is co-author and producer of the film "Les Roues de l'Avenir!" (The Wheels of the Future), a 52-minute documentary that questions how we use bikes day to day and their place in the ecological transition. The idea is to see the bicycle as an essential tool for the transition in tomorrow's city. In this film, many groups get to speak: enthusiasts, professionals, politicians, associations... This broad sample provides very different viewpoints on how to approach together the transition to more sustainable mobility.

We hope this roundup introduced you to some inspiring people! Feel free to follow their adventures! If these people made you want to learn more about soft mobility, you can read our article on this topic.