Moving Missouri Forward Summit
Join us for Local Motion's inaugural transportation summit from April 16-18, 2025
Speaker Information
We are so excited to announce the individuals listed below will be speaking at the Moving Missouri Forward Summit. However, there are still more names to come!
We are currently finalizing a few more speakers and panelists who are set to speak on a wide range of topics. From general advocacy, like how to get involved, processes, relevance, etc; to intersections of transportation with other issues like geography, health, aging, etc; and everything in between. Check back later or stay up to date by following our social media.
Anna Zivarts (she/her)
Author of Then Driving Is Not an Option
linkedin.com/in/anna-zivarts
Anna Zivarts is a low-vision parent, nondriver and author of When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency (Island Press, 2024). Anna created the #WeekWithoutDriving challenge and is passionate about bringing the voices of nondrivers to the planning and policy-making tables. Anna sits on the boards of the League of American Bicyclists, the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium and the Washington State Transportation Innovation Council. She also serves as a member of TRB's Committee on Public Health and Transportation (AME70) and the National Aging and Disability Transportation Center Coordinating Committee.
Ed Thomas (he/him)
Executive Director
Camden County Developmental Disability Resources
www.ccddr.org
Ed was born in Monett, Missouri, and grew up in Ozark, Missouri. He became the Executive Director for the Camden County Senate Bill 40 Board, dba Camden County Developmental Disability Resources (CCDDR), in March 2012. Since 2015, Ed has been addressing transportation challenges in local communities, more specifically as it relates to individuals with developmental disabilities seeking access to their communities. Since joining the CCDDR team, Ed is serving/has served in various professional and community service roles, including multiple transportation task forces and councils, community development/housing initiatives, developmental disabilities service associations, and more.
Aída Guhlincozzi (she/her)
Assistant Professor of Geography and Women's and Gender Studies
University of Missouri
Dr. Guhlincozzi studies healthcare accessibility for vulnerable communities. Her work incorporates community geography, Latinx geographies, feminist geographies, and qualitative GIS theory and methodologies.
Rikki Ascani (she/her)
Community Engagement Director
Local Motion
lomocomo.org
Rikki Ascani is the Community Engagement Director at Local Motion, where she serves as a vital bridge between the organization’s advocacy efforts and the voices of the community. Her work ensures that transportation advocacy is deeply informed by those who face the greatest barriers to mobility. Rikki’s passion for the transformative power of transportation was sparked during her time at Virginia Tech, where she first saw how buses could reshape and strengthen communities. Although she doesn’t come from a traditional transportation background, her career has always centered around people. From working as a fisheries biologist to engaging in grassroots activism and now community organizing, Rikki’s diverse experiences have equipped her with a unique perspective on the intersection of environment, community, and equity. In 2018, Rikki moved to Columbia, Missouri, to work for the Missouri Department of Conservation. Her growing interest in the ways physical spaces shape societal outcomes led her to pursue a master’s degree in Geography at the University of Missouri. Her studies focus on community geography, exploring how spatial injustices have contributed to broader societal inequities—particularly the role transportation systems have played in reinforcing those patterns. Rikki is passionate about creating inclusive, people-centered transportation solutions that promote equity, sustainability, and community well-being.
Sarah Owsley (she/they)
Advocacy Director
Empower Missouri
empowermissouri.org
Sarah Owsley is a people lover from Kansas City, MO. She is passionate about ending poverty, and knows that the Missouri state legislature must do more to ease the experience of our neighbors who struggle to meet their basic needs. That can’t happen without lawmakers hearing from the people who know the most about struggle. She spends her day as Empower Missouri’s Advocacy Director providing individual advocates and direct service staff with the training they need to practice legislative advocacy, share their stories, and plan strategies for systems change. She earned degrees from Avila University and the University of Kansas.
Mandy Buettgen-Quinn (she/her)
Engineer 1
City of Springfield
safeacross.com
Mandy Buettgen-Quinn received the International Baccalaureate in 2001 in Germany, two years after completing a year as an exchange student at Hillcrest Highschool, in Springfield, Missouri.
Mandy studied Transportation Engineering at the Technical University of Berlin. After her undergraduate studies, Mandy continued her education with focus on crash-related bio and vehicular mechanics and human factors till 2005. During that time, Mandy became a student researcher for the European Commissions’ Advanced Passenger Safety Network (APSN) – an effort to create a network of excellence to unify research, best practices and standardization among member countries. APSN focuses on crash data, dummy development, virtual testing, structural crashworthiness as well as user groups and education.
Mandy moved to the United States in 2005 and started with Springfield Public Works in 2006. In the Traffic Engineering department, Mandy has gained experience in many areas, but currently she is leading Springfield’s Vision Zero program, the SGF Yields pedestrian safety campaign and its sharable version, SafeAcross. Her pedestrian safety program has won many local, state and national awards and last year, Mandy was honored with the Public Service Award by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
In her spare time, Mandy and her family run a hobby farm and on weekends, she organizes an outdoor adventure group.
Christina Williams (she/her)
Bike Bus Leader
Bike Walk Joplin
www.bikewalkjoplin.org
Christina Williams has been leading a successful bike bus to her children’s school since 2021. Now in its 4th year, most elementary students in Christina’s neighborhood ride to school daily with the Bike Bus. This year, she started a route extension from the elementary school to middle school.
When not riding bikes with the neighborhood kids, she works for Corner Greer & Associates, a Joplin-based architecture firm, as a project manager and interior designer.
She has been an advocate for active transportation for many years and participated in the Missouri Complete Street Consortium in 2020, served on Joplin City Council for the 2020-2024 term, and helped found Bike Walk Joplin.
Walter Jenkins (he/him)
Data Storyteller
Geostack Solutions
www.linkedin.com/in/walter-k-jenkins
Walter worked in Public Transit since 2011 having worked for 3 different agencies as a planner, analyst and web application developer including Metro Saint Louis. Walter worked on specific issues in public transportation focused around redesign of full systems, federal reporting and disparate impact methodology and analysis.
Walter works in Saint Louis, MO on web development and analysis projects helping his clients tell stories with data. He is currently building TransitChat, a way for Public Transit agencies to document and track issues for reporting and analysis and FixItSTL, a 311 mobile app in coordination with the City of Saint Louis.
Hannah Conner (she/her)
Epidemiologist
Kansas City University
Hannah Conner, MPH is an Epidemiologist at the Kansas City University Center for Population Health and Equity. In her nearly five years of professional public health experience, she has developed a passion for understanding how social drivers of health affect the communities within the Kansas City metro. She received her Bachelors of Science in Biology from Truman State University and her Masters in Public Health from Drexel University. She spent the next four years at the Wyandotte County Public Health Department where she led their most recent Community Health Assessment and worked on issues spanning widely from COVID-19 to violence prevention to substance use to urban heat, all through the lens of equity. Additionally, she sat on the Wyandotte County Community Health Improvement Plan steering committee and the Complete Streets Traffic Plan for Rainbow Blvd. Now at Kansas City University, she continues to seek to understand how public health systems can be more equitable and how the built environment can be utilized to make optimal health and well-being the easiest choice for all.
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