Future Bike: Joanna Bernstein

Our Future Bike forum this September integrates the efforts of our Women Bike and Equity initiatives, meeting at the intersection of mobility and identity. For speaker Joanna Bernstein, it’s also a confluence of her professional work with local immigrants and her personal passion for bicycling. 

A Pittsburgh native, Bernstein works at the intersection of urban planning and public participation, and will faciliate our discussion on Community Engagement. How do we cultivate bicycling by understanding, connecting with and building on local residents’ community vision? What can we learn about effective outreach from grassroots organizers and bike advocates, like Chema Hernandez-Gil of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and Miguel Ramos of Multicultural Communities for Mobility?

Join us on September 11 to engage in this important discussion! 

“I’m excited to see how Future Bike will expand notions of transportation and bike planning beyond serving the needs of traditional bicyclists and transportation advocates — and I’m eager to discuss how utilizing innovative methods for civic engagement among diverse communities can encourage other planners and practitioners to use these practices in their respective communities,” Bernstein says. “Participating in Future Bike will enable my personal passions for bicycling, social justice and civic engagement to meet in a unique and inspiring way.”

Read Bernstein’s bio below and register for Future Bike here.

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Joanna Bernstein is the Service Coordinator at Casa San Jose Pittsburgh, a welcome and resource center for Latino immigrants. She works to connect Latinos with the resources and services that they need and to engage them in civic affairs.

Joanna holds a Master’s Degree in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Oregon. While studying in Oregon, she worked under Dr. Gerardo Sandoval and conducted community based research on how to encourage undocumented immigrants to participate in local government.

She worked as a planning consultant to the City of Eugene’s Human Rights Office and assisted the City in developing their first LEP (limited English proficiency) plan. She was as an active member of the Lane County Network for Immigrant Integration in Oregon, an inter-agency task force focused on immigrant-friendly city and county planning.

She began riding a bike in Oregon in 2010. After getting comfortable with biking in a small town, Joanna now enjoys biking the streets of Pittsburgh, something that she knows she would not have had the confidence to do had it not been for her three years living in Oregon. She is passionate about issues related to social and racial justice. She is particularly interested in how to foster cultural understanding and cooperation between Black and Latino communities.

Joanna is originally from Pittsburgh, Pa. and is looking forward to pursuing her career in this exciting, rapidly changing city.