We were honored to celebrate the annual Advocacy and Education Awards at this year’s National Bike Summit — one of the most beloved traditions in our movement, and a chance to lift up the people and organizations doing the hard, joyful work of making bicycling safer, more inclusive, and more accessible across the country.
The 2026 award winners represent the very best of our movement: dedicated professionals, tireless volunteers, inspired educators, and creative changemakers who go far beyond what’s asked of them. Their work is building a more impactful, inclusive, and Bicycle Friendly America for everyone.
Club of the Year Award
This award recognizes a bicycle club that has done an exceptional job integrating advocacy into club activities, supporting advocacy organizations, and creating welcoming events for new and experienced bicyclists alike. Clubs that earn this recognition are inclusive, energetic, and committed to growing bicycling in their community.
Our 2026 Award Goes to: Elmhurst Bicycle Club
Founded in 1977, the Elmhurst Bicycle Club (EBC) is one of the largest, most active cycling clubs in the Chicago region — and one of the most advocacy-driven. With members throughout northeastern Illinois and beyond, EBC rides at the speed of fun, welcoming cyclists of all skill levels year-round. But their reach extends far beyond the ride itself: EBC members can be found running, hiking, snowshoeing, volunteering at regional cycling events, and making the case for safer streets at every level of government.
The club has been actively involved in bicycle advocacy at the local, state, and national level for more than 20 years — spearheading safety and infrastructure improvements, engaging with elected officials on relevant legislation, and showing up consistently where it counts.
Youth Empowerment Award
This award recognizes leaders who empower young people through bicycling advocacy, education, and opportunities to ride. From community bike shops to schools and youth-serving nonprofits, this award honors the mentors who are cultivating the next generation of cycling advocates.
Our 2026 Award Goes to: Major Taylor Michigan Cycling Advocacy
Major Taylor Michigan Cycling Advocacy (MTMCA) is a Detroit-based nonprofit that transforms bicycles into tools for economic mobility, workforce access, and community empowerment. Mark “Marco” Speeks (pictured right) is the organization’s Founder, Executive Director, and a League Certified Instructor (LCI).
Named for Marshall “Major” Taylor — America’s first Black world champion cyclist — MTMCA operates five interconnected programs that build a cycling culture rooted not in recreation, but in access, independence, and opportunity:
- The Joe Louis Greenway Bike Bus
- Operation: Rack and Roll, an infrastructure initiative installing bike racks at Detroit Public Schools adjacent to the Joe Louis Greenway
- Stride and Glide, a balance bike literacy program for pre-K through third grade
- Bikes 4 Employees, a revolving loan fund connecting transportation-insecure workers with bicycles and gear
- Bicycle Safety Town at the Detroit Historical Museum, a museum-based bicycle safety program
Together, these programs reflect MTMCA’s deep commitment to making Detroit a city where cycling is essential transportation for everyone.
Advocacy Organization of the Year Award
This award goes to a bicycling and/or walking advocacy organization that, in the past year, made significant progress — growing its capacity, deepening its programs, and achieving meaningful wins for biking and walking in its community. This award comes with the Jon Graff Prize for Advancing Safe Cycling, a $1,000 prize made possible by an ongoing annual donation from longtime League supporter, the late Jon Graff.
Our 2026 Award Goes to: BikeWalkKC
BikeWalkKC works to make the bi-state Greater Kansas City region a place where residents are no longer required to drive to thrive. Through advocacy, public policy, Safe Routes to School programming, urban planning, and bike share initiatives that support people living with transportation insecurity, BikeWalkKC is reshaping what mobility looks like in Kansas City and beyond.
Their leadership doesn’t stop at the local level. BikeWalkKC is a founding member of Missourians for Responsible Transportation — a collaboration of the state’s four regional mobility organizations — and has been a consistent resource and partner for advocacy organizations nationwide.
Susie Stephens Joyful Enthusiasm Award
This award commemorates Susie Stephens, one of the Alliance for Biking & Walking’s founders and an enduring inspiration to so many in the bicycle and pedestrian movement. It honors an individual or group who carries on Susie’s passion for advocating for bicycling as a fun, joyful, and economical means of transportation.
Our 2026 Award Goes to: Marley Blonsky, All Bodies on Bikes
Marley Blonsky is a nationally recognized cycling advocate, speaker, and educator whose work centers a simple but powerful idea: biking should be for everyone. She is the co-founder and Executive Director of All Bodies on Bikes, a nonprofit dedicated to creating welcoming spaces for people of all sizes to experience the joy of cycling — through community rides, industry education, and the kind of honest, generous storytelling that changes minds.
Marley has worked with brands including Shimano, Shredly, Ride with GPS, and Osprey Packs to advance size inclusion and accessibility across the bike industry. She is a columnist for Cycling Weekly, a sought-after speaker on inclusion in outdoor recreation, and was named a 2024 Outsider of the Year by Outside Magazine. Based in Portland, Oregon, she can usually be found on her bike, building community, and sharing the adventure.
Katherine T. “Kittie” Knox Award
This award recognizes champions of equity, diversity, and inclusion in the bicycling movement — individuals or groups who have led the work of making bicycling more inclusive and representative, and who have worked to remove barriers to participation for underserved and underrepresented communities. Learn more about Kittie Knox and her legacy here.
Our 2026 Award Goes to: MassBike and Plays in Place
This year’s Kittie Knox Award honors a remarkable collaboration between two organizations that are bringing Kittie Knox’s trailblazing story to new audiences in a genuinely unexpected way.
Since 2018, Plays in Place has partnered with diverse cultural institutions to develop and produce new site-specific plays rooted in the stories of overlooked and often-forgotten people — with a focus on race, slavery, abolition, women’s history, and the fight for woman suffrage. Their work has taken place in historic churches, iconic cemeteries, New England meeting houses, and the Senate Chamber of the Massachusetts State House.
In 2025, in partnership with MassBike, they produced The Kittie Knox Plays — a series of “bike” plays about the biracial barrier-breaker Kittie Knox herself. This spring, the two organizations will publish a book of the plays, complete with production photos, essays, and production tips, to encourage cycling and theatre groups everywhere to explore Kittie’s legacy. Plays in Place was also recently recognized with the 2025 Excellence in Consulting Award from the National Council on Public History.
Emerging Leader of the Year Award
This award celebrates a young person who is new to the bicycling movement and has already demonstrated exceptional, inspiring advocacy. Nominees have shown real leadership in their short tenure and the potential to keep shaping the movement for years to come.
Our 2026 Award Goes to: Laura Pauls-Thomas
Laura Pauls-Thomas (they/she) is a storyteller, community organizer, and self-described joy-monger based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A League Cycling Advocate, Laura is the founder and director of Ride, Roll, & Stroll Laster — a young adult-led, intergenerational advocacy and community-building project that advances safe biking, walking, and better transit. They also serve as a transit organizing fellow with Transit For All PA, and volunteer in leadership and board roles across multiple transportation, land use, and urban vitality organizations in Lancaster.
Laura works full-time as a nonprofit communications director — and still manages to weave advocacy, connection, and genuine joy into everything they do. When they’re not any of the above, Laura enjoys knitting, sewing, traveling, and being outdoors with their spouse Andrew and their dog Pinto.
Gail & Jim Spann Educator of the Year Award
This award recognizes a League Cycling Instructor who has worked to elevate bike education in their state or community — someone who has been actively teaching in the past year, serves diverse communities, and has brought genuine innovation to their education work.
Our 2026 Award Goes to: Fernando Martinez
Fernando Martinez’s relationship with bicycles began in the early 1980s in Mexico City, where he was introduced to the sport through the manufacturing of steel bikes and bike parts. He became a League Cycling Instructor in 2005, when he managed the Texas Safe Routes to School regional program in Amarillo — instructing and mentoring a new generation of young cyclists.
Now the head of the RideONE Bicycle Program at Commissioner Rodney Ellis’ office in Houston, Fernando has designed and led initiatives that have helped position Houston and Harris County as national leaders in cycling. He brings over four decades of bicycling experience to the role, along with certification as a professional race mechanic. His days are filled with bike rodeos, community rides, group rides, rolling meetings, and golden rider programming — work he approaches with the belief that the true power of bicycles lies in their ability to connect people and create lasting change.
Bicycle Friendly America Leadership Award
The Bicycle Friendly America Leadership Award recognizes civic, academic, and business leaders who have made significant contributions toward a shared goal: an America where biking is safe, comfortable, and accessible for all. From mayors and CEOs to public agency leaders, academics, and university presidents, this award honors changemakers whose leadership moves the whole movement forward.
Our 2026 Award Goes to: Ken Rose
Ken Rose leads the CDC’s Active People, Healthy Nation℠ initiative — a nationwide effort to help 27 million Americans become more physically active by 2027. A leading expert on how transportation and community design shape public health, Ken has spent nearly three decades at CDC advancing active, healthy communities. He is an everyday cyclist and a longtime leader in Atlanta’s bike community, bringing both national perspective and real-world experience to his work.
His career is a testament to what it looks like when public health and active transportation advocates work together — and the League is proud to honor his extraordinary contributions.
Citizen Advocate of the Year Award
This award honors a dedicated volunteer advocate who has made significant contributions to the promotion of bicycling and walking in their community — someone who selflessly gives their time and energy to improve local transportation options and sets a high standard for grassroots advocacy.
Our 2026 Award Goes to: Rob Kadota
Rob Kadota is the Mayoral-appointed chair of the City of Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee and a League Cycling Instructor since 2023, with over 350 hours of instruction specializing in Adult Learn to Ride classes. He was also a proud participant in the League’s inaugural League Cycling Advocate (LCA) class.
Rob’s volunteer footprint is expansive: he staffs the Mar Vista Farmers Market Bike Valet and Repair Stand, supports SAFE, SFA, and Bike LA, and volunteers as a Tandem Captain with Wayfinder Family and Velo Club LaGrange, working alongside visually impaired stokers in one of the most meaningful dimensions of his advocacy work.
Professional Advocate of the Year Award
This award goes to a leader of a bicycling and/or walking advocacy organization who has shown extraordinary dedication to advancing active transportation — going above and beyond their job duties to inspire change, influence policy, and improve quality of life for the people they serve.
Our 2026 Award Goes to: Jacob VanSickle, Bike Cleveland
Jacob VanSickle has served as Executive Director of Bike Cleveland since 2012, growing the organization into Ohio’s leading safe-streets advocacy force. Under his leadership, Bike Cleveland has helped secure more than 160 miles of bike lanes and trails across the city and advanced model policies including Complete Streets legislation and Ohio’s 3-foot passing law. The organization has been central to major initiatives including Vision Zero, citywide Safe Routes to School planning, and Cleveland’s Midway protected bike lane network.
Today, Bike Cleveland’s programs engage more than 12,000 people on bikes each year, educate over 1,000 youth and adults in safe bicycling, and host the Bike Cleveland Fundo — the largest urban bike ride in Ohio.
A graduate of Spring Arbor University with a degree in sociology and community development, Jacob helped convene the founding leadership team that built Bike Cleveland from the ground up. He currently serves as board president of the Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation and is a graduate of Leadership Cleveland (Class of 2021). He is also a generous resource for executive directors and advocacy organizations across the country looking to be more effective in their own communities.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to nominate these outstanding leaders. And thank you to all of our past award winners — your continued dedication to this movement inspires us every year. Interested in nominating someone for a future award? Learn more about the Advocacy and Education Awards here.