From a recent press release
In May, RTC announced the retirement of the organization’s long-time president, Keith Laughlin. Under Keith’s nearly two decades of leadership, RTC has grown to become the largest nonprofit organization in the country to advocate for trails and active transportation, expanding the organization’s mission to include a focus on connectivity—emphasizing the importance of connecting trails to create active transportation systems in every community across the country.
Ryan Chao, currently the vice president of the Center for Civic Sites and Community Change at the Annie E. Casey Foundation (Casey Foundation), will become the organization’s third president. Chao will join RTC on Jan. 28, 2019.
Chao brings to RTC deep expertise in a broad-range of issues that directly affect community health and well-being—from housing and finance, to mobility, social impact and civic infrastructure. In identifying Chao to lead the organization into its next chapter, the board is emphasizing the powerful role that trails, walking and biking play in creating healthy, thriving communities nationwide.
As vice president of the Center for Civic Sites and Community Change, Chao oversaw the Casey Foundation's multisector place-based strategies. Two projects of note for the trails movement include significant neighborhood transformation initiatives in Atlanta and Baltimore intended to link economic, educational and housing programs with outcomes focused on strengthening families and communities—communities that are also home to emerging trail networks, the Atlanta Beltline and the Baltimore Greenway Trails Network, an RTC TrailNation™ project.
Chao’s leadership reinforces the organization’s role at the forefront of the active transportation movement, with powerful projects underway that have the potential to catalyze the development of trail networks nationwide, including:
· TrailNation—the organization’s trail network initiative, focused on building model trail networks in places that are diverse in geography, size and scope nationwide. These trail projects are designed to be replicated and prove what is possible when trail networks, walking and biking become central to our lives.
· Trails Transform America—the organization’s policy initiative to secure federal, state and local policies that prioritize public investments in trail networks, elevating the importance of trail networks as essential community assets.
· TrailLink.com—the premiere trail-finding website and mobile app in the country, helping more than 7 million people annually explore trails and providing the foundation for RTC’s GIS database that seeks to account for every multiuse trail in the country and powers the organization’s vision of connectivity.
· The organization’s research agenda—dedicated to building the evidence base for trails walking and biking by focusing on connectivity and the value proposition that trails deliver to all types of communities.
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