Board of Directors
Board positions:
| Co-President | Casey Gifford | caseyg @ cascade dot org |
| Co-President | Richard Wolf | richardw @ cascade dot org |
| Treasurer | Nick Zylkowski | nickz @ cascade dot org |
| Secretary | Kelly Koster | kellyk @ cascade dot org |
| Director | Demi Allen | demia @ cascade dot org |
| Director | Nick Brown | nickb @ cascade dot org |
| Director | Gabe Castillo | gabec @ cascade dot org |
| Director | James Dorsey | jamesd @ cascade dot org |
| Director | Roxana Gomez | roxanag @ cascade dot org |
| Director | Allison Handy | allisonh @ cascade dot org |
| Director | Gina Kavesh | ginak @ cascade dot org |
| Director | Michael Lui | michaell @ cascade dot org |
| Director | Brice Maryman | bricem @ cascade dot org |
| Director | Margaret Moore | margaretm @ cascade dot org |
| Director | Kai Shih | kais @ cascade dot org |
Meet the board
Casey Gifford, Co-President
Wheels: A cheap aluminum Trek for commuting, a Rodriguez steel-frame for touring, a Felt for triathlons, and a basic mountain bike for hitting the trails
Rides: Casey sold her car shortly after moving to Seattle, so primarily gets around the city on two wheels. In recent years, she's started enjoying bike touring, including weeknight camping trips on Bainbridge. She's raced a few triathlons and completed her first century during Cascade's RSVP ride.
About Casey: Casey is driven by a desire to develop thriving communities and a healthy environment by making it safer and easier for everyone to bike.
Casey dabbled in bike racing in high school and began biking for transportation in college at the University of Oregon. After graduating, Casey moved to Denmark where she studied bicycle transportation as a Fulbright Fellow and learned how thoughtful decision-making and design can transform how people choose to get around. She received her masters in urban planning from Aalborg University.
RICHARD WOLF, Co-President
Richard is a retired tech executive, most recently with Microsoft and earlier with Lotus in Cambridge, MA and Xerox in Palo Alto, CA. He is currently an angel investor helping start-up technology companies develop and grow. He has lived in Seattle for 25 years. Other than cycling, his interests include travel, opera, boating, and he is an avid soccer fan, holding season tickets to the Seattle Sounders.
Richard has been a bike rider his entire life and has been an active club rider in Palo Alto, Boston, and Seattle. Since retiring he has spent 2-3 months each year in France where he rides with French bike clubs. In France he became interested in randonneuring (long distance cycling) and in 2015 he completed the legendary Paris-Brest-Paris, a 1200 km event first run in 1891. He has participated in most of the events offered by Cascade - STP, RSVP, RAW, Flying Wheels, Chilly Hilly, Kitsap Classic - and is a free group ride leader and frequent participant. His favorite recent Cascade experience was volunteering to pre-ride the STP, marking the course for hazards and flagging inaccuracies.
Richard has also done many other types of riding: daily commuting, touring, tandeming, and even tricycling to work when he broke his leg and could not dismount from a bicycle. His fleet includes several folding bikes, a tandem, and a couple of steel classics, but he is most often found these days on a modern carbon fiber bike.
Richard is interested in offering a perspective based on his diversity of club involvement, having seen how a variety of clubs provide different models of a club experience to serve their communities. He is interested in advancing the safety of cyclists on our roads, having witnessed how local culture that respects cycling and legal frameworks such as vulnerable user laws can enhance rider safety. He is also interested in including the growing e-bike community in Cascade. He believes that a strong local bike club that represents all cyclists is essential to helping every cyclist.
Nick is a Senior Portfolio Manager for Russell Investments. He holds a BA in Economics and Mathematics from Pacific Lutheran University. Nick is a currently serving on the Cascade Finance Committee. He has a strong background in finance and analytical perspective and will continue to bring this expertise to Cascade and the Finance Committee.
Nick has been an active cycling enthusiast for over a decade and has participated in numerous Cascade events including the STP, Chilly Hilly and Emerald City Ride. Twelve years ago, he was introduced to cycling on a dare from a friend: ride the STP in one day. The problem was he had never really ridden a bike further than 10 miles and had three months to train. That summer opened his eyes to a love of cycling, which has provided countless enjoyable, and at times painful, hours of his life since. Cycling has brought him some of his closest personal relationships, taken him on adventures around the world, and enriched his life in ways that are hard to express. He will be forever grateful that STP and Cascade were there to open that door 12 years ago, and Nick appreciates the opportunity to contribute to an organization which he knows has a profound impact on every community member it serves.
Kelly Koster, Secretary
Raised in small town Eastern Washington, Kelly couldn’t wait to get out and explore the density and diversity of New York City in her college years. Five years in America’s largest city did not jade this tree-hugger, but it did cause her to fall deeply in love with all things urban—especially mobility. At home in the PNW, Kelly’s found the right balance of nature, city, and cycling. She has a graduate degree in urban planning from the University of Washington (UW) and loves to nerd out on the psychology of behavior change.
Kelly discovered bike commuting during her first summer in Seattle. Her friend offered to ride with her and show her the ‘rules of the road’. She’s been hooked ever since. During her time teaching in the Community, Environment, and Planning (CEP) program at UW, Kelly created and led a study abroad course titled Sustainable Urban Mobility that took students to The Netherlands, Denmark, and England. These studies not only opened her students’ eyes, but also her own, to the power of the bicycle to improve urban mobility, equity, and quality of life.
Currently, Kelly is the Director of Marketing & Corporate Affairs at Luum, an enterprise Commute Management Platform that aims to get fewer people driving alone to work. Kelly also serves on the Associate Board for the Jubilee Women’s Center and as the Association of Commuter Transportation (ACT) Cascade Chapter President. Kelly will bring her expertise and passion for sustainable mobility to her service on the Cascade Bicycle Board of Directors. Together we can make happier, healthier, and more equitable communities through mobility!
Demi Allen, Director
Demi was a corporate lawyer in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry for more than 20 years, commuting to work by bike in Seattle for much of that period. But the time came when he had to do work more aligned with his passions for active transportation and biking. So, he got his MBA in Sustainable Business and took a job as the General Manager for the first bike share system in Seattle. He learned a lot from the Pronto experience and moved on to work with JUMP, the shared e-bike provider that was acquired by Uber. JUMP showed that e-bikes can play a meaningful role in urban transportation and prompted many people to buy their own e-bike after trying the shared bikes.
After a final role working on deploying charging infrastructure for electric bikes and scooters (also known as light electric vehicles or LEVs), Demi retired. He is now focused on travel and exploration with his wife Cezanne, as well as advocating for better bike facilities on Bainbridge Island (his home) and elsewhere. He enjoys hiking and swimming along with biking and recently added a mountain bike to go with his gravel/commuter bike. He is pleased with the improvements in Seattle’s bike infrastructure over the past 10 years and looks forward to seeing even more safe places for people of all ages and abilities to ride for transportation or fun (or both!).
NICK BROWN, DIRECTOR
I am a life-long cyclist excited to join the board of Cascade Bicycle Club to both participate in and support a club whose mission I believe improves the quality of life in our communities. My own cycling spans racing, touring, and commuting and I realize the benefit of the Club’s hard work every time I saddle up. The Club’s comprehensive approach to serving the community broadly, and cycling specifically, motivates me to join the Board of Directors.
Professionally, I’ve got 20 years’ experience in business consulting, with an extensive background in stakeholder management and operating model design, as well as bringing clarity and order to challenging engagements and a people-focused, empathy-driven approach to problem solving. I have volunteered for the Club in the past, doing maintenance on the fleet of bikes used for kids classes, and I am always excited by the passion of the people that make the Club work.
Off the bike and outside of work, my interests include teaching Nordic skiing, photography, and the quest to make the perfect loaf of sourdough.
GABE CASTILLO, DIRECTOR
Gabe works for Pacific Premier Bank as a VP, Senior Branch Manager with over 35 years in the financial field and experienced in managing and opening new branches for banks. He plans to bring his business development, corporate partnership affiliation, and procurement know-how to Cascade. He enjoys working with non-profits organizations because he believes they are the backbone of communities for the work they do in enriching, educating, and reinvesting resources back into the community. Gabe has been on the board of Seafair, FamilyWorks Food Bank and Resource Center, Billings Middle School, and currently with the Green Lake Chamber of Commerce.
He rediscovered cycling after his knee doctor suggested that he find a low-impact sport and since then has become an avid cyclist, having completed 23 straight STP – the first 5 on a mountain bike and the last 2 on e-bikes – the streak broken only by the pandemic, 7 RSVP, 2 High Pass Challenges and numerous other Cascade events. He started Gruppetto Cycling, a social cycling club with a focus on camaraderie, offering group rides and access to cycling information. His dad bought his first bike from Goodwill. It was red and fast. He’s had many bikes, “too many” his wife would say, since that red bike. His current ride is a Specialized Creo and a Specialized Levo – both e-bikes.
Gabe grew up in View Ridge, just up the hill from Magnuson Park, and rode his bike down to watch the planes take off and land in the 1970s when it was called the Sandpoint Naval Air Station. When he’s not riding, he enjoys walks, reading espionage and time travel books as well as refereeing high school, select teams, and CYO basketball.
James Dorsey, Director
James Dorsey is President and CEO of College Success Foundation, a national nonprofit dedicated to coaching and supporting students from low socioeconomic backgrounds to prepare for and graduate from college as transformational leaders in order to forge a just and equitable society. In this role, James oversees all aspects of the organization that has supported more than 11,000 underserved students to graduate from college. As Cascade expands its bike education programs statewide, James offers a critical perspective in growing the organization sustainably.
James has dedicated his career to education reform and leading national, statewide and campus-based programs to improve educational equity for underserved students. James holds both a bachelor's and a master's degree from California State University.
Roxana Gomez, Director
Roxana Gomez (she/her) is a first-generation American and the proud daughter of Honduran immigrants. She was born in Seattle and raised in South King County, and learned early in her life that where you live heavily affects your health outcomes. This awareness pushed her to study the social determinants of health at the University of Washington, where she graduated with a BA in Public Health. She later took her knowledge of impacted communities and lived experience to politics, where she served as a Legislative Aide to Council President M. Lorena González. She now works at the ACLU of Washington, where she works to advance their legislative agenda in Olympia.
Roxana first took up cycling as a form of exercise (and as a way to get out of her UW dorm). Soon enough, she was going on long rides almost every weekend on the Burke Gilman. Now, she doesn’t ride outside as much as she would like to, but when she does, she’s reminded of the liberation that cycling provides her.
Of course, not everyone feels this freedom. Roxana acknowledges that communities of color, in particular those in South King County, need greater investments in infrastructure before they feel safe riding their bike on the road. She’s hoping to bring this passion and awareness to the Cascade Board!
Allison Handy, DIRECTOR
Allison has enjoyed cycling since childhood but started riding seriously in 2007 in Chicago. Since then, she has done triathlons, cyclocross races, and biked across Colorado and all over Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan. Since moving to Bainbridge Island in 2013, she has been a year-round bike (and ferry) commuter to her job in Seattle and enjoyed the 2018 RSVP. Allison rides regularly with her husband and two kids on Bainbridge, the Olympic Peninsula, and wherever else they can find the opportunity.
Professionally, Allison is the Co-Chair of the Corporate & Securities Practice at Perkins Coie LLP. She counsels public and private companies on corporate governance practices, disclosure issues, and capital markets transactions, such as equity offerings, debt offerings, and tender offers. She is also a leader of the firm’s Environmental, Social, and Governance advisory team, and co-founder and frequent contributor to the firm’s Public Chatter blog. Allison also serves as a trustee of the Pacific Northwest Research Institute.
At Perkins, Allison is active in connecting with other bike commuters in the Seattle office, especially those who are just starting in bike commuting and looking for guidance on safe routes and office amenities that make bike commuting easier.
Gina Kavesh, DIRECTOR
Gina is a Seattle native but found cycling during the few years she lived in the Bay Area. She has been a Cascade member for over 25 years and has participated in the majority of Cascade’s rides – STP, Chilly Hilly, RSVP, Flying Wheels, Kitsap Colors Classic, and many others. Along the way, Gina created several cycling clinics including a women’s only clinic in Redlands, Calif. with an average attendance of more than 100 women.
Gina has been involved in cycling governance at the national level through USA Cycling and at the local level with the Washington State Bike Association. She also served as the Executive Director of The WAVE Foundation which is best known for Cycle the WAVE. She is excited to be able to spend her energy as a Cascade Board member to support all the critical work Cascade is undertaking to ensure cycling in the Pacific Northwest is accessible and safe.
Professionally, Gina has been a retail business owner, a nonprofit executive director, and is now self-employed as a business consultant focused on working with small businesses to improve their operational functions.
Michael Lui, DIRECTOR
Mike is an entrepreneur, combat veteran, former management consultant, and product manager. Most recently, he founded and led a life science startup. Formerly, he advised Fortune 500 companies on various aspects of their corporate strategy and governance. His time in the US Army culminated in an overseas combat tour. Finally, Mike was a product manager for a large tech firm. Through all these career experiences, Mike learned the importance of teams and communities.
Mike has cycled all his adult life and has taken part in long-distance rides all over Pennsylvania, New York, California, Oregon, and Washington. After moving to Seattle eight years ago, he fell in love with the ease of cycling in the city and surrounding counties. He has participated in most of the events offered by Cascade - RSVP, Ride for Major Taylor, Flying Wheels, Chilly Hilly, and more. You’ll often find him doing laps of Mercer Island or catching his breath on the way up Zoo Hill.
Mike is interested in advocating for increased cycling diversity, safety, and infrastructure. The more people that ride bikes for all purposes – commuting, fitness, or social – the better the quality of life for everyone in the region. He is excited to advocate for these issues and to help Cascade continue to be a strong bike club that represents cyclists of all backgrounds.
Brice Maryman, Director
In his work as a landscape architect, Brice works with communities around Puget Sound to create healthy places for people and the planet. He has worked with Seattle/King County Public Health and several suburban communities develop policies and build infrastructure to advance health equity, making activities like biking the easy choice for residents. He has also helped Washington's Transportation Improvement Board develop a Complete Streets grant program that helped dozens of communities across the state--large and small, urban and rural--adopt Complete Streets ordinances.
Brice's advocacy work has contributed to the passage of several ballot measures resulting in millions of dollars of new cycling infrastructure. He served on several citizen's advisory committees, Seattle's Green Ribbon Commission, and the Board of Seattle Parks Commissioners. In 2017, he was a Landscape Architecture Foundation Fellow exploring the intersection of homelessness and public space.
Brice lives with his wife and son on a neighborhood greenway. Though anyone with eyes tries to keep him away from the lycra racks, his wife's phone does have several sweaty pictures of him in too-tight clothes at the end of several Cascade rides including the Major Taylor, RSVP and STP.
Margaret Moore, Director
Wheels: 2004 Rodriguez Stellar Race for road riding and 2007 Rodriguez Rainier for riding in the rain and for touring.
Rides: I have been a Cascade member since 2002 and have participated in the major Cascade rides. My favorite rides are RSVP and RAW (6 times each). I have been a ride leader with Cascade for around nine years and have been active with the Cascade Training Series both as a rider and as a leader. I have toured in California, Texas, Wisconsin (self-supported) and in France, Italy, and Portugal (pampered by a tour company).
About Margaret: I began riding seriously in Austin, Texas in 1983 with short bike tours and a local century event and continued riding tours and century events in San Diego, Calif. My husband Phil and I met in San Diego, introduced by mutual friends who knew we shared a love of cycling. We enjoyed cycling in San Diego, but the lack of safe bike infrastructure became a real barrier over time for me to access bicycling. Upon arriving in Seattle in the late ‘90’s, we discovered the terrific trails and other bike facilities that opened up this beautiful area for exploration and discovery by bike. Since then, when not riding, I have assisted as a volunteer with advocacy campaigns for transit and climate issues.
In the last 20 years, conditions for cycling have improved tremendously, but there are real issues with connectivity in the Puget Sound region that remain a barrier to access to cycling for many people. I believe that biking should be safe, appealing and accessible to all in this region. I believe that this goal is very achievable with the focus and effort by Cascade and with the support of its members.
My work as a research biochemist in the biotechnology industry brought me to Seattle. I am retired but still consulting, with over 30 years of experience in protein chemistry and molecular biology. The natural beauty of Washington and the great bicycling opportunities have determined to keep me here.
Kai Shih, Director
Kai was the last kid in his neighborhood to ditch training wheels: he was too afraid to even try. As a parent, he wants his kids to be so much better than he was. He wants biking to teach his kids to brush off that scraped knee, to feel the joys of independence and the thrill of accomplishment, to get exercise, and to help the environment. When his 10-year-old suggested they bike STP, Kai said "let’s try" even though none of them had biked more than 15 miles. The family started on group rides; his wife and two older kids have now ridden Major Taylor and Chilly Hilly together, and all had a wonderful experience. His view is these experiences will be formative, and a ride like STP will be a lifetime memory for them.
However, Kai still hasn’t seen many families or people of color participate on Cascade’s rides. He would like to join the board to push for a greater emphasis on family-oriented programs, and for increased access to biking for people of color and underserved communities. Kai believes kids, people of color, and the underserved can enjoy a lifetime of positive impacts from biking with some encouragement and support. He would like to see programs like supported rides for families (training wheels welcome!), and medals for your first ride, and for kids.
As for Kai, he’s the president of the board of the Denise Louie Education Center, which provides early childhood education to underserved communities around Seattle. He’s also the founder of Shih Investments, a financial services firm. And he holds graduate degrees from Stanford and MIT.