ACCT HIRES NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Click here to listen to Zachary Shahan, new Executive Director of ACCT, interviewed on "The Wake Up Call" on WNRN.

PRESS RELEASE: September 4, 2007

New Executive Director at ACCT

The Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation, more popularly known as ACCT, has hired a new Executive Director, Zachary Shahan. Zachary started in this role on August 15th, following Alia Anderson’s resignation and move to California to pursue a Master’s degree in city & regional planning. Zachary just recently received his Master’s degree in city & regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in sustainable land use and bicycle/pedestrian planning. He spent his final semester in school in the Netherlands as a “Network for European & U.S. Regional and Urban Studies Fellow” and as an “Environment, Natural Resources and Energy Division of the American Planning Association Fellow.” He completed his Master’s Project on the relationship between bicycle facilities and bicycle travel in the United States and the Netherlands while studying Dutch spatial planning and policies at the University of Groningen. Zachary brings his inspirational experiences from UNC and the Netherlands to this new job at ACCT and intends to help make Charlottesville a truly bike-friendly, pedestrian-friendly, transit-friendly community.

Zachary received his undergraduate degree in Sociology and Environmental Studies, with strong interests in political activism, environmentalism, social consciousness & social change, and sustainable communities. With all of this as his educational and professional heart, he is looking forward to working in a fairly progressive and politically active community, but also intends to push for more progressive policies and programs, more expansive social consciousness and awareness, and more visionary thinking throughout the greater Charlottesville community.

“We could be doing a lot more to promote a truly balanced transportation system in this country, and Charlottesville is no exception. Charlottesville is doing some really great things, and I am very happy to be working here, to be working in a community so receptive to the needs of the day. Nonetheless, I think we could be doing much more than we are and I hope that through my new role at ACCT I will be able to help the residents to see better visions of their community and to realize those visions, too.” – Zachary Shahan
Living the dream, Zachary does not own a car and will be traveling around town as a pedestrian, bicyclist, transit-rider, and carpooler the large majority of the time. If you cross paths with him, say “Hello!”