Maria Elena Price (Chair)

Maria Elena Price (known as M.E. by many of her friends) co-owns ExperiencePlus! Bicycle Tours, an international bike touring company founded by her parents in 1972 and a longtime corporate member, sponsor and lifetime member of Adventure Cycling. Maria Elena manages the company’s stateside growth and development from its headquarters in Fort Collins, Colorado while her sister manages the European operations in Italy. Maria Elena holds an MBA from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She grew up as a tour leader running trips for her parents at the time in Italy, Spain and S. America. She hopes to pedal more in the USA in the coming years. In 2011 Maria Elena and Monica Price were both selected by National Geographic Traveler to be listed in their Top 10 Guides in the world feature. Active in the Adventure Travel Industry and motivated to continually consider how tourism impacts the world, in 2016 Maria Elena was honored to join the Adventure Travel Trade Association’s Advisory Board for the next 5 years.

Daniel Kanter (Vice Chair)

Rev. Dr. Daniel C. Kanter is the Senior Minister and CEO of First Unitarian Church of Dallas. Daniel started cycle touring on a one speed bike in India when he was 19 years old. Since then he has traveled across the country, around Wales, England, Ireland, France and his home state of Texas! He is passionate about bikepacking and cycling with his team The General’s Guard, a homegrown Dallas effort to support people with cancer.

Daniel came to Texas in 2001 from Boston and after holding the Associate Minister position he was called to the Senior Minister role in 2009. He was the President of the Senior Ministers of Large UU Churches as well as a part of a Unitarian Universalist Association task force to define ministerial competency. He has taught at Brite Divinity School and was the Harvard Divinity School Fellow in Residence during the Fall of 2017. He is the author of Faith for the Unbeliever, published by Skinner House Books in 2017. Daniel joined the Board of Trustees of Reading Partners of North Texas in 2020. He has served on a number of national nonprofit boards as member and chair and is excited to join Adventure Cycling’s Board of Directors in January 2023.

Noel Kegel (Treasurer)

Noel is president of Wheel & Sprocket, a nationally-recognized, family-owned bike shop serving communities in Wisconsin and Illinois. Empowering and supporting bike travel and advocating for better bike infrastructure has been at the core of the company’s DNA for over thirty years. In high school, his first job at Wheel & Sprocket was to provide mobile mechanical assistance to dozens of organized rides and tours each summer — it was through those experiences across the backroads of the Midwest that Noel learned the real joy that riding brings to us all. Noel firmly believes that bikes make the world a better place, so in turn, part of his responsibility is to work to make the world a better place for bikes. Noel is an avid bike traveler having rolled over roads and ruts, over mountains and through valleys in over thirty countries but loves calling Milwaukee, Wisconsin home.

Ricky Albores (Secretary)

Richard "Ricky" Albores is a life-long traveler as the eldest of three sons to a father whose career with the US Agency for International Development took them on assignments around the world. Ricky’s love for all forms of bicycling adventures began as a first-grader in Laos roaming the neighborhood streets on his Sears Free Spirit banana seat bike. His latest adventure was as an inaugural member of the Melanin Base Miles Gravel Race Team, a BIPOC group of racers, in 2022. He also graduated from the UC Berkeley School of Law and went on to join the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington D.C. where he has enjoyed a nearly 30-year career.

As a daily bicycle commuter, Ricky has logged tens of thousands of miles alongside vehicular traffic and is intimately familiar with what works and doesn’t to keep bicyclists safe on the road. He is also committed to dismantling car-centric infrastructure and advocating for complete streets that prioritize bike and pedestrian safety, as well as efforts that increase racial, gender, and ability diversity in the bicycling community.

Ricky recognizes that these daily "adventures" can feel challenging and scary to the ordinary person riding their bike, but it should not have to be that way. "Adventure Cycling is the kind of organization that can provide the support and resources to help all bicyclists feel confident and safe on their travels (short or far), and that is why I chose to serve."

Ricky’s first term will also begin January 2023.

Joyce Casey (Past President)

Joyce joined Adventure Cycling in 1998 and became a Life Member in 2010. Joyce has been leading tours and teaching new tour leaders since 2008. She values Adventure Cycling because we provide people with the tools to realize their own goals and dreams.

Joyce is a retired federal employee. She has worked with all levels of government and has extensive experience in policy development and issue resolution. “I am excited to serve on the Board because I have seen firsthand the empowerment and personal growth people experience through bicycle travel. I am honored to have the opportunity to help grow Adventure Cycling.”

You might run into Joyce at the grocery store, at her local state park on a bike overnight, or dipping her wheel after a cross country tour. If you can get there on a bike, count her in.

Elizabeth Kiker

Elizabeth connected to Adventure Cycling in 2005, when she joined the bike world as an employee of the League of American Bicyclists, which frequently collaborates with Adventure Cycling. In 2006, Elizabeth joined Adventure Cycling on a cross-country trip from Seattle, Wash. to Washington, D.C. Elizabeth spent 11 years working in bicycle advocacy and leadership, ending with a three-year stint as Executive Director of the Cascade Bicycle Club in Seattle, Wash. Now happily back on the east coast, in Arlington, Va., Elizabeth is passionate about her pink custom Waterford touring bike (a gift from her husband and father when her first child was born), about making biking easier for everyone, and about going on family bike trips. Her family biked the C&O from their home to Pittsburgh in summer 2020, and attempted to bike the Erie Canal in 2021 (stopped, unfortunately, by a fierce wind/bike trailer crash). They have big plans for summer 2022, assuming COVID allows for international travel and biking! Adventure Cycling’s ethos of inclusion, great bike routes, and community call to Elizabeth, and she is thrilled to serve on the board. When not volunteering locally or nationally on behalf of better bicycling, Elizabeth is the chief development officer for House of Ruth, a shelter for women and children survivors of domestic violence in Washington, D.C. She lives in Arlington, Va. with her patient husband, Jason, and their three adventurous children: Oliver, Allyson and Eleanor.

Scott Edwards

Scott Edwards is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Curator of Ornithology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He came to Harvard in December 2003 after serving as a faculty for 9 years in the Zoology Department and the Burke Museum at the University of Washington, Seattle. His research focuses on diverse aspects of avian biology, including evolutionary history and biogeography, and disease ecology. His fieldwork has taken him around the world and he particularly enjoys making connections with and learning from scientists in diverse cultures. He has spent much of his career trying to make environmental science more accessible and inviting to BIPOC students in an effort to diversify the field. In 2019, he won (with Rich Kliman) the inaugural Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Access Award from the Society for the Study of Evolution, a major scientific society focusing on evolutionary research and education.

Scott has been a bicycle enthusiast since his time in college, spending two summers co-leading trips for students in New England and Europe for the Student Hosteling Program in Massachusetts, and cycling solo around the Big Island of Hawaii and down the north coast of California. In the summer of 2020, Scott undertook a ~3800 mile, 76-day solo, unassisted bicycle ride across the US, meeting lots of interesting people and landscapes, and is now eager to help ACA fight for better bicycle infrastructure and access across the United States.

Audrey Snyder Welsh

Audrey’s (she/her) relationship with Adventure Cycling started when she was a child through bedtime stories of her father’s 1980 Bikecentennial trip. Inspired by his adventure and the community he made along the way, Audrey set out to pursue bike touring at a young age to mirror her father’s journeys. At 16, she completed her first cross-country bike tour where, at her trip end, she was surprised by her parents and her father’s bikecentennial trip mates. It was there when Audrey experienced the power of bike touring and the value of the journey, not the destination. Many tours later, Audrey later became a bike guide with Overland Summers for three seasons to pass down her love for bike touring to over 100 young riders (ages 8-16). Additionally, she was employed to assist in training bike guides to lead their own bike tours. By the summer of 2018, Audrey and her partner biked Adventure Cycling’s North Star route where she was able to experience her first official ACA guided tour, aside from being a frequent purchaser of their maps. So far, Audrey has logged over 15,000 miles loaded as a solo tourer, bike guide, and trip participant on both paved and gravel routes.

Aside from Audrey’s bike knowledge, Audrey attained her Master’s in Business Administration with a focus on Global, Social, and Sustainable enterprises. Her interests lay in how business can be a force for good and accelerate systemic change to better our people and our planet. Through this passion, Audrey has developed over three businesses routed in social and environmental impacts. With experience in Start-Ups, Audrey understands all aspects of business development and capitalizing on strategic plans to prioritize the Triple Bottom Line. Audrey is excited to bring her knowledge and lived experience to the Board through the perspective as a younger Board Member. Additionally, Audrey hopes to be a thought-partner in developing initiatives to engage young riders and support ACA and it’s staff into this exciting period for the organization!

John McDermott

John Mcdermott: John has spent a lifetime in the outdoors. Growing up in an adventuresome family, John’s first jobs were leading trips as an Outward Bound instructor, spending his free time rock climbing and kayaking. During a career as a technology industry executive, John maintained his passion for the West, outdoor adventure, and conservation. Since retiring to Santa Fe, NM, he describes himself as a passionate mountain biker, bikepacker, and skier, committed to giving his time and expertise to organizations that keep adventure and wilderness at the heart of the American landscape and culture. “I am thrilled to join the Adventure Cycling board and help the organization to continue to be the leader in bicycle-centric adventure travel and bicycle advocacy for its’ next 50 years. Perhaps best of all I get to spend time with the extraordinary staff and board of Adventure Cycling, giving me some new tips for keeping up with my two bikepacking daughters.”

Flavia Chen

Flavia Chen was a daily bike commuter but new to touring when she pedaled from Boston, MA to Seattle, WA along the Adventure Cycling Northern Tier route in 2012. Since that ride, Flavia has become increasingly attuned to both the infrastructure that enables cycling and the extent to which the sense of freedom and independence engendered by biking depends on community support. Paying forward the immense generosity she received on her cross-country trip, she participates in local bike advocacy, hosts cyclists as part of the Warm Showers network, and became an ACA Life Member in 2020. An interdisciplinary public health researcher, Flavia’s professional expertise lies at the intersection of genomics, data governance, ethics, and policy. She has significant experience in project management, grant writing, policy, and stakeholder engagement. Issues of representation and equity are core to her work, and she hopes to leverage her perspective on population and environmental health in service of the ACA’s mission during her tenure on the Board. Flavia received her MPH from the University of Washington’s Institute for Public Health Genetics and her BA in environmental studies and history from Bowdoin College.