Pierre Gerard ’16 graduated from Wesleyan with a degree in environmental studies and earth and environmental science. He is currently the transportation planner at the City of Oakland Bicycle and Pedestrian Program in Oakland, California. We recently spoke with Pierre about his time at Wes and his post-Wes experience!
Can you walk me through how you got from Wesleyan graduation to where you are now?
My first job out of college was an internship with the US Forest Service in Portland, Oregon. I worked out of their regional office for the Pacific Northwest, mostly performing GIS map work, making maps online. I did that for about six months, and eventually found my way over to a contract with Apple, working on Apple Maps––I did not like that. I moved over to another contract job doing more GIS work, decided that I didn’t like that either, and ended up quitting that job to work at a bike shop. And so my story, I think, is essentially me attempting to understand what it’s like to be a technical worker post college, and realizing that I didn’t like it and needed something else.
The reason that I fell into these technical roles was largely because I took GIS classes at Wesleyan, but that kind of approach to what felt like a meaningful application of a technical skill didn’t result in as meaningful of an experience as I thought it would. I was on the search for meaning, and I ended up at a bike shop needing some kind of instant gratification from my work. Helping people fix their bikes and getting them on new ones brought me a lot of satisfaction. And through that experience, I met someone who told me about an internship at the City of Oakland in this bicycle and pedestrian program at the Department of Transportation. I applied, I got it, and it got me to where I am now. So yeah, I needed to try a lot of stuff to figure out what I actually wanted to spend my time doing.
Do you feel that same instant gratification or satisfaction from the work you’re doing now?
No, I wouldn’t say it’s instant. I will say it’s a lot more meaningful than the more technical jobs I was doing. I would consider my role here at the City of Oakland fairly expansive. Essentially, I like to focus on the grant money applications here to install bicycle parking and signage to support nonprofits with bicycle education initiatives and encouragement initiatives that we have to get people commuting and recreating.
Are there any projects or accomplishments that you feel particularly proud of?
The thing I’m most proud of right now is actually the simplest part of my job, and I think that’s why I find it most satisfying. I install bike parking for the city, or I manage contracts to get them installed, which involves me riding my bike around the city and looking for spots to put bike racks. When I was an intern that’s how I started, and now I’m able to take interns around the city. I get to see a lot of the city and hear what they’re thinking about, get these fresh perspectives on culture and infrastructure and so on. I find that my accomplishments here are very intersectional, and the greatest accomplishment is whenever I’m able to take a bike ride with a bunch of my co-workers and do good by people. That’s actually a critical function of how the city performs outreach work––very informally, less public meetings and more just talking to people about their needs.
How do you think your time at the COE has translated into what you do?
When I was a part of it, I felt like the College of the Environment was a fairly expansive topic. It felt more or less like a forum for ideas, and I think that having that community gave me room to think more associatively and generate fun, new ideas. That room to explore was definitely worth something, and shouldn’t be discounted.
Is there anything that you wish more people understood about transportation, urban planning, or sustainability?
I wish that more people understood that multimodal conflict––as in when pedestrians, cyclists, wheelchair users, motor vehicle drivers, and truck drivers all have to share space–– that the more conflicts there are, the healthier the system is. There are a lot of factors that go into this, but people tend to slow down, and in their slowness they need to navigate around one another. In more suburban communities, more rural communities, I think there’s plenty of space for everyone to just kind of have their own lane, and that’s fine, but in a city, I wish more people understood that needing to navigate around one another and to make space for one another is really valuable to to creating both a sense of vibrancy––that there’s a lot going on––and safety in that we have to look at one another in order to ensure that we don’t bump into each other.
It feels like that applies to more than just transportation, doesn’t it?
Oh yeah. Yeah it does. Things just have to happen at low enough speeds, and the risk of someone getting hurt is lower, and the risk of someone getting killed is virtually zero. I may not be the best person to comment, but I think that principle of conflict being a generative rather than regressive force in a community is really important.