Virtual ThinkTransit Day Two Keynote: Lauren Skiver

This is the second of three special Transit Unplugged episodes from Virtual ThinkTransit. Our Day Two keynote was by Lauren Skiver, CEO of SunLine Transit Agency. challenged us to find our power and purpose to innovate.

Lauren hit head-on the challenge of innovating in a regulated business like transit. We have a great responsibility to our staff, riders, and everyone else sharing the road, but we also have a responsibility to make sure transit evolves with the times and does more.

Innovations in transit are essential to the continued health, growth, and resiliency in the industry. While Inspiration is a noun, Lauren sees it as something to spur action. Something to help us take the next step:

"Inspiration creates action in my mind"--Lauren Skiver

Lauren looks as each thing she has to do as an opportunity to see how it can improve herself or others. She sees even the most mundane tasks as opportunities for innovation.

Like Robbie, Lauren sees working in transit as a higher calling, not a j-o-b job:

"Public transit is a calling, not just a job. It's something we do because we create something for the community, feel good about how we connect people to jobs, we feel good about how we create mobility for a community, and we feel good about the people we work with in this business."

For Lauren, innovation and inspiration come down to harnessing your power and purpose for good. Sometimes it's scary. Sometimes we've used our power in the wrong ways, but the pandemic has shown us all we need to tap into our own personal power and purpose to push ahead.

At SunLine Lauren is striving to have an entirely renewable energy-powered fleet by 2035. Already leaders in CNG, full electric, and hydrogen fuel cell electric buses, Lauren is pushing the agency farther and fast than they dreamed.

The drop in ridership in the pandemic gave her the unique opportunity to innovate faster towards building their own microgrid, generating their own hydrogen for buses, and more.

Lauren showed how harnessing your passion and purpose--like breaking our dependence on fossil fuels--is something within all our grasp. We just have to seize it.