Flavia Chen (Chair)
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. 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.
Maria Elena Price (Vice 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.
Marin Byrne (Secretary)
Marin Byrne is the lead fundraiser for the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, building on a long career raising philanthropic resources to support a variety of mission-based nonprofit organizations. She has extensive experience in both grantwriting and working with individual donors, and has served in leadership roles in multiple nonprofits during times of significant transition. She says, “I love fundraising because I don’t just find money that allows great things to happen in the world; I also get to help people live out their values through supporting causes that are meaningful to them.”
She’s been happiest on two wheels from a young age, and rides year round in her hometown of Minneapolis, MN. After watching her friend Patrick race the Tour Divide in 2010, she became obsessed with the idea of riding the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. She brought this dream to fruition in 2019, with a solo northbound trip from Antelope Wells to Banff, which also led to a GDMBR tattoo (please don’t tell her mother). Now a solid convert to the power of bicycle travel to transform lives, the thing she loves most about being an ACA member is talking to anyone who is willing about plans for their next bicycle adventure, be it overnight or across the country.
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.
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.
Brian Pachtman
Brian’s love of cycling started while living in San Francisco. Being on two wheels within a more populated area quickly changed to a need for adventure outside of the city limits. He spent 4 years working for Backroads as a guide and Regional Support Specialist in areas such as Hawaii, Death Valley, California Wine Country, Switzerland, and Croatia. Brian was fortunate enough to spend time on the hiring and training team that molded guides into the service experts that Backroads is known for. That role truly shaped not only Brian’s love of seeing the world on a bike, but also helping others along the way.
Following Backroads, Brian obtained his MBA in Investment Finance and Entrepreneurship from Babson College in MA. He knew that service to help others remained important and opened up a fitness experience in Boulder CO along with a fitness consulting company. Building a community of like-minded individuals that were ready to support one another was extremely rewarding for Brian. That experience shaped how Brian thought of start ups, marketing, and customer service. Following an exit, Brian then partnered with three others to purchase an insurance agency in Bedford PA. He was there for 8 years as CFO/COO. The love of the bike has never left Brian as he continues to travel the world on two wheels. Brian is honored to be on the board and helping others with their adventures. Whatever way that means to them.
David Read
David C. Read, MBA, MPH, is the Vice President of Medical Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA. Read is responsible for the Institute’s largest department. In prior roles Read served as the Administrative Director for Cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Chief Operating Officer for the Department of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. He received an MBA from Boston College and a Masters in Public Health from Harvard University where he studied epidemiology and health policy. His other bicycle and trail related work included serving on the Board of Trustees of the East Coast Greenway Alliance (2007 – 2018) and the September 11th Memorial Trail (current). His professional and non-profit work intersects with advocating for better infrastructure for active transportation and the positive impacts this can have to reduce heart disease, obesity and certain types of cancer. He also has his private pilot’s license, does some woodworking and has made most of the furniture in his home. He and his family reside in Topsfield, MA.
Steve Resnick
Steve Resnick is a technology executive with decades of experience creating digital products that drive impact. He is a hands-on leader who stays current on digital strategy and execution across web, mobile, and emerging technologies.
Inspired by Bikecentennial as a kid, Steve became an avid cyclist who enjoys long-distance bicycle travel at a slow pace. He has planned self-supported bike trips for friends and family throughout North America and Europe, and has ridden Adventure Cycling’s North Star Route from Missoula, Montana, to Denali, Alaska.
In 2015, Steve approached Adventure Cycling with the idea of offering its routes and data through a branded mobile app. Working closely with ACA staff and leadership, he built and helped launch the Bicycle Route Navigator. By 2024, the mobile app had generated significant sales of digital routes and supported cyclists navigating over 25 million miles.
Steve brings a focus on innovation and digital execution to the board. He is excited to help the organization embrace new travel preferences and trends as the next generation of cyclists discover the transformational power of bike travel.
Bob Stapleton
Bob Stapleton is an entrepreneur who enjoys developing and guiding high performance teams in high technology and endurance sports. Bob brings over 20 years of technology, business development, marketing and general management experience from highly successful wireless companies. Bob also owned and operated one of the most successful men’s and women’s World tour cycling teams and has directly supported USA Cycling and it’s Development Foundation for over 20 years. Bob has served as: Chairman of USA Cycling, member of UCI Management Committee, member of UCI Worldtour Board, and President of the Economics and Technology Development Committees of the UCI. Bob also served on the Board of IRONMAN for seven years and is an enthusiastic off-road cyclist who completed the GDMBR in 2023.
Linda Tacke
Linda Tacke is a retired business consultant. Her career was multi-faceted, she spent approximately a decade as a Franciscan nun, a decade in corporate finance after earning an MBA, a decade in nonprofit leadership (serving as CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters in Minneapolis) and the balance of her career as a consultant focused on nonprofits leadership transition and program restructuring. She is a realist who began her analysis with mission and tracked the numbers.
She and her husband David paddled/camped in Minnesota’s Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness since the early 1980’s. They were empty nesters before discovering how much fun biking could be and adopted bike travel for commuting and recreation. It was a short hop from canoe camping to bike camping. David passed from leukemia in 2017. Linda retired in 2018 and became “retired, self-funded and unsupervised”. She went to India in 2019 to become certified in yoga and continues today to teach yoga. Linda will tell you, she loves retirement!!
Linda’s connection to Adventure Cycling Association first began with the magazine. It became her goal to complete all the epic tours. In 2020, she started saying she was “busy biking”! Linda discovered many regional week-long tours, eg. RAGBRAI, CaNDak, Michigan Shoreline etc. Her first ACA epic tour was the Southern Tier in 2021, followed by the Pacific Coast in 2022, the Trans Am Express in 2023 and a repeat of the Pacific Coast in 2024. She loved the daily milage challenges, the camping/cooking, but most of all the group comradeship and support. Spend 40-74 days with a group and they are friends forever. Linda plans to bike Paris to Istanbul, summer 2026.
She is excited to join the board of Adventure Cycling; hoping to help ensure the infrastructure so important to bike touring is strong and accessible.
Lael Wilcox (currently on a leave of absence to set Around the World Cycling Record)
After growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, Lael Wilcox started riding bikes in her 20s to get to work. This quickly became riding all over town and then across the country. After seven years of traveling by bike all over the world, she started bikepack racing– setting records and winning races on Adventure Cycling Association’s Great Divide Mountain Bike Route and the TransAmerica Trail. She’s been ultra racing around the world since 2015. For her, the most exciting aspect is that women can compete against the entire field and go for the overall win. Her favorite way to prepare for a race is to bike to the start– she’ll often ride thousands of miles from home to get to a race.
Lael is passionate about getting more women, girls and people of all kinds out on bike adventures. She organizes a middle school girls mentorship program, women’s adventure rallies, and women’s adventure scholarships.
After setting the women’s record in 2024, Lael Wilcox is back to attempt the overall record for circumnavigation of the globe by bicycle in 2026.
For Lael, no time on a bike is wasted. It’s the best way to learn about the world and share meaningful time with others. It’s the most fun way to travel.
Cyndi Steiner (Ex Officio)
When Bikecentennial was occurring across the country in 1976, Cyndi was riding and camping along the C&O canal towpath on a Girl Scout trip. That experience sold her on bicycle travel, and she has enjoyed it ever since. She was a road racer from 2001 through 2010 (and holds two NJ state championships), coached a women’s racing team for three years and then added cyclocross and mountain biking to her racing portfolio, along with a twice-yearly road tour in Europe. No longer a racer, loaded touring is her favorite way to ride now, and Cyndi appreciates how being a diversified rider has enhanced her approach to touring. She has organized and led a number of tours on the Delmarva Peninsula, where she grew up, including tours in this area for ACA’s Bike Travel Weekend. She also contributed to the mapping of ACA’s Delmarva route. She currently tours about 2-3 times a year with a growing group of friends who organize and plan each trip together. Now an ACA Life Member, her dream is that ACA will revive the Gaspe Peninsula tour.
Off the bike, Cyndi had a 20-year career in middle-management level systems development/IT and finance positions at Ernst & Young LLP, and later became the executive director of the New Jersey Bike & Walk Coalition, where she developed her grassroots advocacy expertise. She also served on the board of directors of Bike New York (18 years) and the 911 National Memorial Trail Alliance (5 years) where she was a key player in obtaining new trail right-of-way in north Jersey from Norfolk Southern for the 911 trail. Cyndi holds a BS degree from Cornell University, an MS in Information Systems Management from Stevens Institute of Technology and an MS in Environmental Science from Rutgers University.
Cyndi believes in the life-changing, transformative power of bicycle travel and is excited and eager to be part of the ACA organization, helping to reach more people and encouraging them to join the movement.