Team

Brendan loves cities and technology. His background in transportation engineering and programming gives him a unique ability to solve planning and transportation problems through web-based maps, open data, interactive tools and APIs. He’s been playing with the web for so long he can remember when Netscape was king and the blink tag rocked his world!

With twenty years of experience in web development and programming, Brendan’s technical expertise is specialized in transportation data and maps. He has experience with GTFS, Google Maps, openStreetMaps, Mapbox, and other forms of geographic data. He has created open-source tools for managing transportation data including transit, bike routes, and walking tours.

Brendan has set up complex systems on top of mapping, displaying transportation data, and exploring interactive charts. Brendan also has extensive experience in api design, web application development and mobile app development with projects in node.js, javascript, python and PHP. His full-stack coding experience includes two decades of work with CSS, javascript, HTML, responsive design, cross-browser testing, React, and next.js.

Brendan has been a conference speaker on transportation technology, transportation engineering, mobile development, open data and developer platforms. He has published original research in the Journal of American Planning Association, and the North American Transportation Research Record.

Familiar with blogging since before Blogger, Alec has twenty-four years of experience in written, broadcast and online communications. Equally comfortable creating content for both short- and long-form social media, he has managed tweeting, posting, blogging, editing newsletters and managing website content for a variety of organizations. He is passionate about people having equitable access to transit and safe, healthy transportation options and has both volunteered for and served on the Board of bike advocacy organizations.

Alec provides digital marketing strategy, copywriting and campaign ideation services to local and national clients. Completed work includes complete rewrite of website content for national communications agency, campaign ideation for international dairy-free foods company, and social media needs assessments and website creation for local companies.

Alec’s background in content creation includes experience with a variety of platforms and software, including: graphic asset creation, survey design, email newsletter creation and database management, online advertising, social media, blogging and website management, audio editing and video creation.

In addition to his online content experience, Alec has a twelve year background in broadcast communications, having worked for two radio stations as on-air host and producer between 1995 and 2007. Beyond hosting a regular radio program, he voiced and produced radio commercials, conducted in-studio interviews, emceed regional events, wrote commercial ad campaigns, envisioned and created station imaging, supplied content for radio websites, and served as producer for a morning talk radio program.

Ruth led product management and business development for BlinkTag from 2013-2017, and is back to continue these functions and more. Ruth left BlinkTag in 2017 to join Apple, where she managed deployment of the Transit feature of Apple Maps for North America. Most recently, she was the Head of Product for the Customer Technology Department at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), where she directed the technical development behind several user-centered experiences for the fourth largest transit agency in the United States.

Ruth has a Bachelors of Science in urban planning from MIT and Masters of City Planning from UC Berkeley, and is a volunteer with the TransitMatters Data Lab in Boston.

Preston is a front-end web developer and designer who also enjoys cycling, airplane photography and vintage mountain bikes. Previously, Preston has worked as a bike mechanic and as a luggage supervisor for a major airline, so he knows the value of attention to detail, customer service and not losing bags. Preston brings a unique blend of bicycle advocacy and technical know-how to his work and is known for his detailed QA processes.

Trucy is a front-end web developer, product designer, and project manager who also enjoys baking and teaching people Swedish. Previously, Trucy studied Mechanical Engineering at The University of Iowa and Civil Engineering at UC Berkeley, and has worked on projects ranging from virtual soldier research to accounting software for restaurants.

Jed has more than ten years of experience with transportation technologies and data. In addition to his role as a Principal at BlinkTag, he has worked at both Apple Computer (3 years) and Uber Technologies (4 years), where he specialized in analyzing and manipulating global mapping data sets for routing and display. His work has taken him everywhere from Bogotá, Colombia, to Seoul, South Korea, and he has deep knowledge of how to interpret digital maps in a local context. In addition, he has experience in data science, including the anonymization of user-generated location data.