TUMI 2026 Conference

Ben Welle is a Director of Integrated Transport & Innovation at WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities.

Ben’s work includes leading global research and projects, particularly in the areas of public transport, minibus services, mobility planning, access to opportunities, new mobility and innovation, traffic safety, walking & cycling, and public space. Prior to this role, Ben was Senior Associate for Urban Mobility at WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, working on many of the same issues. Prior to working at WRI, he was assistant director of the Center for City Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Land in Washington, D.C., researching and consulting on city parks, public space, green infrastructure, transport planning, and related economic impact.

He has additional background in finance and positions in state government in the State of Minnesota, USA. Ben has a Master’s degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s degree from Hamline University, St. Paul, USA.

Berenice Cubides is a Civil Engineer and holds a Master’s degree in Transport Management, specializing in Traffic, Mobility, and Road Safety. She currently serves as Strategic Mobility Management Coordinator at the Municipality of Cuenca, Ecuador, where she contributes to the planning and implementation of sustainable urban mobility policies and projects.

Throughout her career in the public sector, she has held technical and leadership positions related to mobility, public transport, traffic management, and road safety, including serving as Provincial Director of Azuay at Ecuador’s National Transport Agency and Acting General Director of Mobility for Cuenca.

Her work focuses on mobility and territorial planning, public transport, road safety, and interinstitutional coordination. She has also participated as a speaker and representative of Cuenca in national and international initiatives, conferences, and forums related to sustainable urban mobility.

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.

Prof. Charles Adams is an Academic, the Founding Centre Director of the Africa Centre of Excellence (ACE), Regional Transport Research and Education Centre Kumasi (TRECK); the Centre for sub–Saharan Transport Leadership (CSSTL) and leads the Transport leadership Capacity Advancement Project (TransCAP-Africa) Network at KNUST.

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.

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.

Felipe is the Director of Urban Mobility for WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, with more than 13 years of experience in structuring, developing and implementing projects in different fields such as infrastructure, public policies, urban planning, transport policies and logistics. Felipe is an urban and transport expert with experience in urban mobility projects, planning infrastructure and managing operations in all transport modes.

Felipe is passionate about working on sustainable, equitable and inclusive cities, obtaining disruptive results such as bringing Bogotá to be the city with the largest 100% electric bus fleet in the world outside China in 2022. He also worked on implementing the city’s shared bikes program, the more inclusive in Latam, leading the biggest program for road safety in Bogotá schools. He led the biggest revolution in terms of infrastructure in the city in the last 20 years and led a program for women within the care system to work on the public transport system among others. During the pandemic of Covid-19, he successfully lead the public transport system at the same time the biggest riots in the history of the city occurred, becoming a crisis management expert.

Leadership and communication skills leading multidisciplinary groups and executing projects that influence people’s lives and that require the coordination not only of diverse stakeholders but also different governmental agencies. Experience managing large companies.

MSc. Reginal and Urban Planning Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), MSc. Master’s Degree in Engineering: Construction Engineering and Management at Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), BSc. Civil Engineering and BSc. Industrial Engineering at Universidad de los Andes (Colombia).