Steph Routh
From PortlandAfoot
Steph Routh is a Portland-based advocate of safe transportation and street culture. She became the director of the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition in spring 2009, and was promoted to full-time executive director in January 2012.
Routh was a co-founder of Umbrella, an organization that provides technical support to groups that encourage "community-based street culture," and is an active participant in Shift (where she regularly competes for the title of having participated in the most bike moves) and Cycle Wild.
[edit] Political beliefs
Routh has described herself as a believer in Vision Zero, the notion that publicly funded transportation projects should be built with the goal of causing no risk to human life.
"We need to recognize that it's immoral for anyone to die on our roadway," Routh told Portland Afoot in April 2010. "Taxpayers who are investing in our system have a personal responsibility to make that safer."
If building for total safety means that people can't get around as quickly, she said, so be it.
"Getting people there is first and foremost," Routh said. "Getting people there efficiently is a good second."
Routh said in April 2010 that she's a member of the Oregon Republican Party.
"It's the one I haven't tried before," said Routh, who had supported Ralph Nader's Green Party run for president in 2000. She said she supports "true fiscal conservatism and family values through funded eduction."
[edit] Career and education
Before coming to WPC, Routh worked as a resource development coordinator for Green Empowerment and taught English in northern China and theater in southern Thailand. After the 2004 tsunami in southeast Asia, she volunteered to clean up a coral bay in Thailand. She was born in 1976 and graduated from Linfield College.
A self-trained bookkeeper, Routh said her bundle of enterprises are a way to keep learning new skills.
"My parents are like, when are you going to go to grad school?" she said. "And I'm kind of like, 'I'm in grad school.'"
[edit] External links
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