TUMI 2026 Conference

Birgit Pickel is Director-General for Africa in the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. She has more than 20 years of experience in development policy and cooperation, including 11 years in management positions. Her regional focus is on West‐ and Southern Africa, thematic focus is on global health, governance, and sustainable economic development, including skills development, civil society, civic engagement, and international volunteering.

Mrs. Pickel has lived and worked in the USA, South Africa, Zambia, and Yemen, and short‐term missions to Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Cameroon, and Bangladesh. She has an MA in Political Science and a postgraduate certificate in Development Studies.

Manager/CEO of La Rolita, Bogotá’s first public, fully electric bus operator (the document lists her as “Founder,” but public sources identify her as manager/CEO). She brings 23 years of experience in the transport sector and has driven La Rolita’s model of offering leadership and driving roles to women in a historically male-dominated industry. Under her leadership La Rolita has grown to 547 employees, 47% of them women in maintenance, administrative, and driving roles.

Ms Chilando Chitangala is the Mayor of the city of Lusaka and Vice-Chairperson of the Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa (CoMSSA) Regional Mayors Forum (RMF). She oversees planning and decision-making at city level and is passionate about improving data collection and management for planning and decision-making, gender and social inclusion, climate change and environmental protection, strategic and integrated planning, slum upgrading, and empowerment of marginalised groups. In her position as CoMSSA RMF Vice-Chairperson she acts as an ambassador for the initiative and is responsible for representing and elevating the voices of 300+ cities in project coordination and planning, and for mobilising other mayors to access climate finance and energy access.

She was part of the Bloomberg Harvard Leadership class of 2022-2023. Mayor Chitangala started her political career as a councillor, held the position of Deputy Mayor, and is now the first female to be elected Mayor. She is an inspirational civic leader and mentor for women and girls taking up leadership and decision-making positions at city, national and international levels.

Christian Krämer acts as Director General for Strategy and is Member of the Management Committee at KfW Development Bank. His former responsibility included Afghanistan/Pakistan and Southeast Asia. Before this he led the KfW’s office for Management Affairs. He was responsible for KfW’s relationship with the supervising Federal ministries like the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry for Economic Affairs. This also included the responsibility for the bank’s liaison offices in Brussels and Berlin. Among his tasks was the management of all strategic questions with respect to KfW’s general approach to the European market. He started in KfW’s legal department in 1999 and moved to KfW IPEX Bank (International Project and Export Finance) which covers all international commercial activities in the bank. Christian spent several years in asset based aircraft finance and project finance in the energy sector. Christian holds a law degree from the University of Cologne.

Senior/Principal Gender Specialist at the African Development Bank, based in the Gender, Women and Civil Society department. She holds a Bachelor of Science from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and has spoken widely on the links between women’s empowerment and climate resilience, arguing that adaptation initiatives must address women’s needs and vulnerabilities.

Associate Professor of Civil Engineering (Transportation) at KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana. He is Centre Director of the World Bank/AAU-backed Africa Centre of Excellence Regional Transport Research and Education Centre Kumasi (TRECK), and President of the Ghana Institution of Engineering. He holds a PhD in Civil Engineering (transportation specialization) from Imperial College London and has nearly three decades of experience as a professional engineer in Ghana and abroad.

Mrs. Elizabeth Jones leads the Transport Research portfolio for the UK Government’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). She is the Senior Transport Adviser within FCDO and joined the UK Government in 1997.

Mrs. Elizabeth Jones has more than 25 years’ experience working on international development globally. She has worked and lived in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Bangladesh and most recently for four years in Fiji. She has extensive experience working with partner governments, bilaterals, multi-laterals and civil society spanning transport, water supply & sanitation, urban development and anti-corruption. She has previously held positions on the UK Institute of Civil Engineer’s Transport Journal Panel, Chaired the World Bank Global Road Safety Facility Board, been a founding Board member for Sustainable Mobility for All (SuM4All) and Board member for the University of Birmingham’s Road Management & Engineering MSc.

Evan Freund is a senior director for sustainable infrastructure and finance on the WWF-US Forest team. In this role, he manages programming around infrastructure design, finance, and development, including the five-year Greening Transportation Infrastructure Development (GRID) Integrated Program. Funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), GRID focuses on incorporating biodiversity and ecosystem-related considerations into transportation infrastructure planning.

Prior to joining WWF, Evan managed the Government and Public Sector Practice for CiBO Technologies, a venture-backed agricultural technology startup. From 2005 to 2017, Evan worked for the US government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a bilateral foreign aid agency, beginning his career there as a technical specialist in the Infrastructure practice. This involved designing and overseeing investments in water supply, sanitation, transportation, and energy systems in Ghana, Namibia, Honduras, and Lesotho. From 2008 to 2014, he served as MCC’s deputy resident country director in Maputo, Mozambique, where he helped manage MCC’s five-year program focused on improving economic opportunity through targeted investments in water supply and sanitation infrastructure, transport infrastructure, agriculture, and land tenure. Upon his return to Washington, DC, in 2014, he served as a director and country team lead, overseeing the MCC’s programs in Liberia (2014–2016) and the Philippines (2016–2017).

Evan holds a master’s degree in city planning (MCP) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received his BA from Middlebury College.

Gustavo Gardini is Head of Global Partnerships and Sustainable Investments at Deutsche Bahn E.C.O. Group in Berlin. He manages global relations with infrastructure and real estate investors as well as multilateral development banks.

He previously served as Business Director for Latin America at DB E.C.O., contributing to the establishment of the group’s operations in Brazil, and as Director of the Infrastructure Department at the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (FIESP). Before joining Deutsche Bahn, he worked on renewable energy investments in Europe and Latin America.

He holds a degree in Environmental Management and Sustainability from the Technological University of Cottbus, and studied Civil Engineering at UFMG (Brazil) and Engineering Management at Politecnico di Milano.

Khadija Jallouli is the CEO of HawKar, a startup advancing inclusive and sustainable mobility through innovation. Under her leadership, HawKar develops accessible mobility solutions that improve transportation for people with disabilities while contributing to more equitable urban mobility systems. Khadija is passionate about leveraging technology and entrepreneurship to create social impact and has been actively involved in initiatives promoting accessibility, inclusion and sustainable transport.

Lena Plikat has experience in divers sectors of urban planning and mobility, including consulting, project management, research and communication. Prior to joining GIZ, she has worked as a Research Assistant at the German Aerospace Centre, focusing on the co-creation of mobility and transport planning through digital tools. She is committed to developing sustainable and user-friendly mobility solutions for all.