JEREMIAH
BISHOP
Specialties: Brand Development & Communications · Event Promotion · Athlete Relations & Management · Coaching · Trail Advocacy
Bio: Jeremiah Bishop came up the hard way — wrenching and selling at bike shops before breaking through as a pro athlete with Trek, Volkswagen-Cannondale, and Canyon. A 4-time USA National Mountain Bike Champion and Pan Am gold medalist with an 8th-place finish at World Championships, he built one of the more decorated careers in American off-road racing.
After competing, he channeled that platform into building things: event promoter for the Alpine Loop Gran Fondo, contributor to VeloNews and Pinkbike, ambassador for Outside Blue Ridge and Canyon, and co-founder of an app. More recently, he's been doing trail design and development work with Nature Trails, LLC, adding GIS surveying to his toolkit.
These days he rides mostly gravel and mountain bikes, hikes with his family, and fishes with his kids. He also has a cockapoo, Woody, who likes to ride.
CHIPPS CHIPPENDALE
Specialties: Editorial & Content Strategy · Magazine Publishing · Technical Writing · Creative Storytelling · Community & Event Building
Bio: Chipps Chippendale has been obsessed with bikes since 1991, when he started importing kit from Rock Shox, Salsa, and Bontrager into the UK. A stint as Deputy Editor at Mountain Bike World Magazine led him to do what any self-respecting magazine person would do when their publication gets shuttered — start a better one. In 2001, he co-founded Singletrack World Magazine on a shoestring, built it into one of mountain biking's most trusted titles, and ran it as Editor for 25 years before stepping down in 2026 to pursue, as he puts it, "more fun stuff."
A mountain biker at heart (hardtail, full-sus, tandem — he's not picky), Chipps now lives in the south of France near the Spanish border, where he maintains local trails, photographs village fêtes, roasts his own coffee, and is a board member of the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.
ALAN
CLARK
Specialties: Product Development & Management · R&D (Tires, Tubes & Inflation) · Helmets, Footwear & Eyewear · Third-Party Logistics · Product Viability Studies
Bio: Alan Clark has spent 35+ years turning cycling concepts into products that actually sell. From the Specialized Armadillo tire — still a top-10 seller decades later — to Trek's Flash Charger compressor pump, his fingerprints are on gear that millions of riders use without knowing his name. He held senior product roles at Specialized, Fox Head, Trek, and Kenda Tire before founding VeloOne, his consulting firm, bringing that same instinct to brands across the industry.
A road cyclist at heart, Alan rides the Wine Country roads near his home in Northern California. In 2027, he'll direct the Wine Country Century, a 52-year-old community ride he clearly has strong feelings about.
BEV
CONNELLY
Specialties: Creative Direction · Graphic Design & Copywriting · Photo Direction · Brand Development · Project Management
Bio: Beverly Connelly has spent 25+ years shaping how cycling brands look, feel, and sell. With stints at Bell Sports, Specialized, and Veltec Sports — where her Colnago catalog took home "Best Road Bike Catalog" honors — she's built a career at the intersection of design and business strategy. Before returning to cycling, she led Visual Media at Old Navy, overseeing a team of 12 designers, and brought her creative eye to brands like Apple, California Closets, and KinderCare.
Today, she runs Beverly Connelly Design, helping brands with everything from creative strategy and content to video production and merchandising. When she's not in the studio, she's painting, taking photos, or attempting to surf — which she accurately describes as mostly wetsuit wrestling and floating.
ERIN
DAHLQUIST
Specialties: Creative Web Design • Copywriting & Editing • Email Marketing
Bio: With more than 35 years of experience in outdoor sports marketing, Erin has built brands, launched products, and developed marketing programs for companies including HIND Sportswear, Hi-Tec Footwear, Royal Robbins, Specialized, Original S.W.A.T. Tactical Footwear, and Tifosi Optics. Her expertise spans public relations, promotions, retail marketing, social media, website development, email marketing, and digital strategy. Notable accomplishments include supporting the launch of Specialized's women's-specific product line. In 2019, she co-founded Latchkey Marketing with Jen Soulé, whom she met while working at Veltec Sports (remember them?).
When she's not working, Erin enjoys traveling, running, golfing, and cheering on her favorite baseball and football teams. Although she no longer rides as often as she once did, Erin remains deeply connected to the cycling industry and the people who make it such a unique community.
JENNIFER
SOULÉ
Specialties: SEO • Copyediting • Website Design & Updates
Bio: Jen Soulé's cycling career started at exactly the right moment — her first job out of college landed her at GT Bicycles' Longmont R&D facility during the Superbike project for the 1996 Olympics, at the height of mountain bike racing. From there, she moved through Veltec Sports, Titec, and RockShox, where she helped expand international distribution, before joining VeloPress to manage sales and help bring some genuinely great cycling books into the world. She holds an MBA.
Today, she co-owns Latchkey Marketing with Erin Dahlquist, where she focuses on SEO, copywriting, and web design for clients ranging from Enduro Bearings to the Colorado Music Experience. She also owns and teaches at a yoga studio, which either balances the marketing life perfectly or makes for a very full schedule — probably both.
A mountain biker at heart, she rides a Juliana and keeps sentimental GTs and a Spot in the stable. Off the bike, she's reading quietly, hiking, surfing, paddling outrigger canoes, and spending quality time with her two rescued Old English Sheepdogs, Doug and Ellie.
ZAP
ESPINOZA
Specialties: Brand Storytelling & Communications · Editorial & Content Strategy · Cycling & Moto Industry Knowledge
Bio: Zapata "Zap" Espinoza has spent 40 years telling cycling's stories better than almost anyone — as editor at Mountain Bike Action, Road Bike Action, Electric Bike Action, Motocross Action, and Mountain Bike magazine, and as Brand Manager at Trek. In 1995, he became the first journalist ever inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame, a distinction that pretty much says it all.
Now running Zap Bike Media, he brings nearly four decades of immersion in both cycling and moto to brands that need more than marketing; they need a voice. His guiding conviction: authentic storytelling breeds legitimacy, and vice versa.
When he's not writing, he's riding gravel (is there anything else?), rebuilding his home lost in the Altadena fire, reading the New York Times, and pursuing activities involving, by his own description, a high degree of risk and injury.
JULIE
GAVRILIS
Specialties: Brand Strategy & Positioning · Content Strategy & Copywriting · Strategic Marketing Planning
Bio: Julie Gavrilis has been helping shape cycling brands since before most people knew what a RockShox was. A first-generation employee at RockShox and early Blackburn alum, she went on to found one of the sport's landmark ventures — a racing management company that fielded the world's first all-women's professional mountain bike team, raised over $4 million in sponsorships, and ran global campaigns with partners like Trek, Subaru, Evian, and PowerBar. Her teams won multiple National and World Championships.
Later, she helped lead the launch of WD-40 BIKE, which rapidly grew to seven-figure revenues with distribution across 3,000+ U.S. retailers and 17 countries in just two years. Today, through Jules Marketing Communications, she brings that same instinct for brand building and storytelling to clients in cycling, construction, multi-channel retail, and beyond.
Off the clock, she's cooking for a crowd (proudly Greek), drumming (25+ years), following baseball (go Giants) and pro cycling (go Wout van Aert), and pounding the pavement on twice-daily dog walks.
ERIC
HORTON
Specialties: Business Strategy · Product Design & Development · Sourcing & Manufacturing
Bio: Eric Horton has spent 25 years designing the gear that serious cyclists actually want to wear and ride in. As a product design leader at Fox Racing, Specialized, and Giro, he left his fingerprints on some of the industry's most iconic pieces — the Fox Pilot helmet, Specialized Body Geometry S-Works shoes and saddles, the Giro Synthe helmet, and full footwear lines for both Giro and Canyon. He holds multiple design and utility patents and has won Eurobike and Design & Innovation awards multiple times.
Armed with a BFA in Industrial Design and guided by Raymond Loewy's MAYA principle — most advanced yet acceptable — Eric now runs Form8ion Design & Development, bringing that same balance of bold and buildable to new clients.
When he's not sketching, he's on a Canyon Ultimate CFR, puttering along the coast on a 1978 Tommasini, or struggling to keep up with his two kids on the ski slopes.
WIL
MATTHEWS
Specialties: Visual Storytelling & Brand Photography · Brand Positioning · Visual Media Strategy
Bio: Wil Matthews came up through journalism — selected for a guild traineeship at The Washington Post and part of the first class of the legendary Eddie Adams Workshop — before his cycling hobby quietly took over his career two decades ago. Since then, he's built a visual media practice that spans leading cycling brands and events, informed by time running retail operations, founding the Saturday Night Downtown San Rafael Criterium, and turning wrenches along the way.
He also works regularly in industrial, motorsports, hospitality, and corporate events — not as a distraction from cycling, but because he believes the best practices travel both ways.
Based in the gateway to the Sierras, Wil rides everything with pedals, is perpetually discovering his new favorite road, and, with a green thumb, has a yard that looks amazing in the spring.
AUSTIN
McINERNY
Specialties: Collaborative Process Design · Facilitation & Conflict Mediation · Nonprofit Governance & Development
Bio: Austin McInerny has spent thirty years untangling some of the most contentious public lands disputes in the American West — water rights, endangered species, mining reclamation, national monument designations — as a natural resource mediator for the US Forest Service, BLM, EPA, and state and local governments. He brings that same talent for turning complexity into clarity to the cycling world.
As Executive Director of NICA for nearly eight years, he grew the organization from a Northern California grassroots program into the largest youth mountain biking organization in the country, building partnerships with Trek, Specialized, SRAM, CLIF Bar, and GU along the way. Named one of Bicycling Magazine's "New Heroes of Cycling" in 2016, he's also helped shape the California Mountain Bike Coalition, the Be Good Foundation, and the SF Bay Area Ridge Trail.
These days he leads bike travel tours for Black Sheep Adventures across Utah, Colorado, Maine, and beyond — and his favorite bike is whichever one he's currently riding, ideally loaded with touring bags and pointed somewhere new with his wife.
ERIC
RICHTER
Specialties: Marketing & Sales Strategy · Content Creation · Copywriting & Editing
Bio: Eric Richter has spent 30 years elevating brand trust, reach and value with retailers, consumers and media. At RockShox, he cut his teeth in sports marketing; at Bell Sports/Giro, he helped Giro grow from a $25M single-category brand to a $150M multi-category powerhouse; and as Marketing Director at Mondraker, he led the Spanish brand's push into the U.S. market. Add a stint with Ibis, and you have someone who's seen the industry from nearly every angle.
Before cycling claimed him, Eric spent six years in scholastic publishing as a production graphic artist, proofreader, and project estimator, a background that shows up quietly in everything he does. He's also given 25 years of volunteer service to Kuumbwa Jazz in Santa Cruz, a clear indicator Eric takes his off-hours as seriously as his work.
Eric rides everything, road, gravel, MTB, light touring, on a stable that runs from handbuilt gems (Blue Collar, Sycip, Black Cat) to contemporary carbon. Off the bike, he's gardening, cooking, mixing cocktails for friends, and being supervised by his cats.
ROBIN
SANSOM
Specialties: Brand Strategy & Storytelling · Content Development · Creative Direction
Bio: Robin Sansom has cycling in his bones — from teenage bike shop days to globe-trotting as a pro team mechanic, then into product and brand roles at Kona, Specialized, and Blackburn. At Specialized, he directed the urban bike category; at Blackburn, he ran the whole brand. In 2017, tired of the corporate grind, he walked away and founded Offsite Studio, where he helps brands like Shimano, Canyon, Google, KT Tape, and Leatt tell stories that actually land.
What sets Robin apart is the range: a degree in wildlife ecology from the University of Florida, five years as a field biologist, and a stint in welding and metal fabrication — all before most people finish figuring out what they want to do. He brings that same breadth to his work: fluent in the boardroom, equally at home in the field.
He rides everything — trail, road, gravel, bikepacking, townie — enforces a strict one-in-one-out bike rule at home, and surfs when he can. His philosophy: if you want to win, you gotta show up.
NIC
SIMS
Specialties: Relationship Building · Product Marketing Strategy · PR & Media Communications
Bio: Nic Sims spent 23 years at Specialized, cycling through customer service, athlete support, R&D, and eventually Global Marketing Manager, before moving on to Alpinestars and SCOTT Sports. In 2017, he founded Simbol Communications, where he's since worked with TIME, LeMond, Lizard Skins, Enduro Bearings, NICA, Inov-8, and a roster of brands across cycling, running, skiing, and beyond. He's also a Level 2 USAC coach — because apparently one career isn't enough.
A self-described two-wheels-anything rider, his current stable includes a mountain bike, gravel bike, BMX, and commuter e-bikes. He skis, snowboards, skate-skis, and rides motorcycles. He has a 140-pound Great Dane/Mastiff who thinks he's a lap dog. And he's British, which he notes makes everything sound more expensive.
RICK
SUTTON
Specialties: Business Strategy • International Business Development • Retail Marketing • Sports Marketing
Bio: Checkout D33’s Our Story for Rick’s business background and accomplishments.
Traveling less these days provides Rick more time with family and Ali Dog, sprinkled with lumberyard visits to scratch his DIY itch. Rick frequently rides bikes and just for the hell of it, he occasionally pins on a race number. A music fanboy, RS adds to his ever-growing playlists with each day of the week focused on learning what’s new in a particular genre.