Welcome to Clayton Hopkins, our new PBPAC Secretary!

[Myles G. Smith]

Hello friends and neighbors!

Last night, the assembled PBPAC members elected Clayton Hopkins as the new Secretary! Clayton is newish to Portland and has a lot of experience with walkability and bikeability groups in the Midwest! Welcome, Clayton!

This means John Clark will be cycling off as Board Secretary. He'll circulate the meeting minutes and be getting Clayton up to speed over the next month. Winston remains on the Board as the Previous Chair. John has been a stellar Secretary, keeping us organized and on task, while maintaining our documents and online presence.

We are still seeking a Co-Chair to join me in leading our group. We also would like to appoint district captains, who would serve as liaisons, organizers, and communicators for their neighborhood. We have an exciting year ahead, with a ton of buy-in from the council, staff, and the public to advance our vision of a Portland that puts people first, not driving speeds and parking spaces. The role is not a heavy lift, we are an ad hoc group, governed only by our simple bylaws. These are great opportunities to benefit your community. I'll also say the quiet part out loud - our perspective and our effectiveness would be enhanced from having some different types of folks on the board! There are diverse experiences and needs in our city, we would be stronger if our board better represented them. If you have any interest, please write to me, Clayton, and/or Winston and let us know!

Cheers and welcome, Clayton!

Myles

Chair, PBPAC

Here's Clayton's pitch to us, from before the election last night:

Hi, I'm Clayton, and I'm running to be PBPAC's next secretary. I recently moved to Portland in 2025 and want to help make Portland the friendliest and safest city for walking and biking. My bike and pedestrian advocacy goes back to 2010 – I've been a member of coalitions in Oakland, San Francisco, and St. Louis, and served on a mayor-appointed BPAC in Edwardsville, IL, where our newly-formed committee helped the city publish its first engineer-certified master plan (2022) and earn a Bronze rating from the League of American Bicyclists (2021). 

As a web designer at WEX, I'd love to bring my skills to PBPAC to make content, the website, and social media actionable, engaging, and fun. Beyond that, I'm especially motivated by the equity side of this work: For a decade fresh out of college, I lived car-free and relied fully on transit, walking, and biking in the Bay Area. I attribute living car-free as the primary reason I was able to pay off my student loans from college. I truly resent how our car-culture impoverishes people and reduces both accessibility and mobility at large. Hence wanting to get/stay involved here with PBPAC.

Fun facts: I biked 320 miles down the California coast with ClimateRide.org (2013), bike-toured from Brussels to Amsterdam (2015), and here in Portland, I started riding with Gear Hub's Thursday social rides and participated in Cranks-giving to start getting to know the community. Thanks for your consideration!