Elgin Community Bikes Chair of Board Gisela Lopez-Lauderdale explains her day to day responsibilities as a Chair of Board and why she joined the organization.
Q: How long have you been the Chair of Board at Elgin Community Bikes?
A: I believe I started as the Chair in 2022. I had been volunteering with the organization for about a year.
Q: What inspired you to join Elgin Community Bikes?
A: I guess, the inspiration for starting to participate once I found out more about the organization too, and realized how much it was focused on community building. I also had a strong interest in equity and mobility and how that affects the community, then I got even more interested in participating in the organization and being a part of the leadership.
Q: As a Chair of Board, what responsibilities do you take on a daily basis?
A: There’s not a lot of responsibility with the organization. What my primary job is just to help with communication with the rest of the board. I help out with planning events or managing some of the day to day things with the bike shop, but honestly, the bike shop itself is run primarily by volunteers, and they do such a good job.
Q: How does the organization promote their bike events?
A: We have a website, elgincommunitybikes.org, we have our Facebook page where they post events, and our volunteers usually post the events there. Then there’s also a meetup page and they’ll also post events there. We also try to have things posted in the bike shop, there’s a whiteboard, and sometimes the events will be written on there for anybody who stops by the shop, so that they can also be invited to those events.
Q: Why did the organization choose downtown Elgin to open a bike shop?
A: It’s partially because of foot traffic and just making it the most accessible that it could be to the community. We are Elgin Community Bike. So the focus was to be in Elgin, and then the other part was to be close to where people primarily bike. We wanted to be in a space where we could access those people the fastest.
Q: What goals do Elgin Community Bikes want to accomplish?
A: We definitely are in a time of transition right now. When we moved last year, two Decembers ago, we moved into the larger space for the bike shop. And while the move itself was necessary because we had outgrown the smaller bike shop that we were in. It also came with a lot more responsibility, a lot more merchandise, and just work that honestly, is very challenging to complete with the number of volunteers that we have at this time. So it’s something that we are considering.
Although the organization is in a time of transition at the moment, they’re trying their best to keep the bike shop open for years to come.
