Taylor Jones

Executive Director. Taylor Jones joined Bikes for the World in 2014 as Operations Manager and Business Development Officer. In February 2016 Taylor’s role expanded to encompass oversight and management of Bikes for the World’s international and domestic programs and partnerships. Taylor became Chief Operations Officer in September 2017 and Executive Director in January 2018.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Appalachian State University and a master’s degree in International Affairs from the School of International Service at American University.

A longtime cyclist, Taylor has worked extensively in the bicycle industry for over 20 years in various capacities. Away from Bikes for the World he dedicates time to supporting a successful junior cycling team, catching as many Washington Nationals games as possible and exploring the DC area by bike.

Yvette Hess

Outreach Coordinator. Yvette Hess joined Bikes for the World in March 2010 as part-time Office Manager and later joined us full time as the Outreach Coordinator. Before leaving a career in television she took a vacation to the Philippines where she visited our newest bike project created to keep students enrolled in school. After meeting our bike beneficiaries, visiting their schools, and riding with them through their communities, she came back energized to expand our program to affect more lives through bikes. She has also visited our programs in Costa Rica and Barbados.

Yvette believes in the power of volunteering and enjoys introducing what she hopes will become a lifelong activity to our youngest volunteers. She has volunteered at Children’s National Medical Center, the Kennedy Center, the Pan Mass Challenge in Provincetown RI, and cross country for the Race Across America. She currently walks dogs at Montgomery County Animal Services and Adoption Center and occasionally borrows a ‘shop dog’ to liven up the warehouse. She holds a B.A. in Communications from Salisbury University.

Todd McDonald

Operations Manager. Todd McDonald joined Bikes for the World in March 2021 as Operations Manager. Prior to joining the team, Todd was the General Manager in Washington DC for Revel Transit, an electric-powered, shared mobility company. He previously spent over a decade working in the bikeshare industry as a training and operations manager, helping build capacity, operations and assist expansion in over a dozen cities. Todd also worked on Tour d’Afrique, a trans-Africa bicycle tour. It was on this trip where he was able to see first-hand how donated bicycles serve their end user and the powerful difference they can make in a person’s life.

KEITH OBERG

Executive Director Emeritus. Keith Oberg has led Bikes for the World since its founding. Prior to that, he served as Vice-President and Washington DC Area Coordinator of Pedals for Progress, following a career in international development culminating in 13 years with the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), an independent U.S. Government agency providing grant support to private grassroots development in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 1999, Keith took a leave of absence from the IAF to work with Pedals for Progress and ultimately Bikes for the World, to put into practice some of the insights he gained as a funder, to test the potential of used American bicycles to serve as a catalyst and resource for domestic community volunteer work and community-led development overseas. Keith’s interests in cycling range from the local to the global. A long-time bicycle commuter dating to his early years in Washington DC as a non-car-owning graduate student, he is a former board member of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association and co-founder and past secretary and executive board member of Phoenix Bikes, a youth bike program in Arlington VA. Between 1986 and 1998, Keith served as a member (and chairman, 1992-97) of the board of directors of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, an advocate for environmentally and economically sustainable transportation policies worldwide. Keith holds an M.A. in International Studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a B.A. in Political Science and History from Middlebury College. He currently lives in Arlington VA with his wife, Jessica Mott; they have two grown children, Kathryn and Alexander.

EVAN McDONNELL

Board Chair. Evan joined the Board in 2023 after many years of supporting the organization. Evan brings substantial business knowledge and experience from helping to lead rapidly growing software companies. He also has experience in private equity and business strategy consulting. His longest role was at Appian where he helped grow the company from 150 to 1,500 people and got to be on the floor of NASDAQ when the company went public. Evan’s love of cycling began when he was a teenager with a long and hilly paper route. He started bikepacking (before it was called that) with two different three-week bicycle trips, one from Missoula, Montana to Jasper, Alberta and the other from Seattle to San Francisco. Evan has lived in the DC area for nearly 30 years and has almost always been able to commute by bike to work. Evan holds an undergraduate engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon and an MBA from Harvard. He lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife and has two grown children.

PETER BAILEY

Board member. Peter joined the Board in 2019. Peter has been a volunteer at local bike collections and sales events since being introduced to Bikes for the World at a local networking event. Peter is a strategy executive at J.P. Morgan, where he is currently the Head of Product Strategy for J.P. Morgan Payments. An avid cyclist, and former competitive triathlete, Peter greatly enjoys serving on the Board and helping Bikes for the World achieve the mission making affordable, good quality used bicycles available to low-income people in developing countries. In his free time, Peter loves spending time outdoors with his family- Amanda, Taylor, Mateo, and Lola.

Peter has a Bachelor of Science in Finance and Accounting from Virginia Tech (2004) and is an alumni of the American Bankers Association (ABA) Stonier Graduate School of Banking, an executive education and leadership program delivered in partnership with the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Peter is on the Advisory Board of the Stonier Graduate School.

FRANÇOISE BERTHELOT

Board Member. Françoise joined the Board in 2025. She is a French native (but you can call her Frankie if its easier). She spent 30 years as a credit officer assessing lending risks in high risk transactions for large Wall Street firms in the New York area. But the 2009 financial crisis upended her world, and she decided to volunteer for most of a school year as an English teacher at a small startup school in Guatemala where the student body (about 40+ kids from 7 to 14 years old) included a fair number of children from indigent families. She learned some Spanish real fast, faked it til she made it, and realized there were other things in life more fun and satisfying than financial forecasts. After returning to NY and the financial world, she volunteered to help Harlem teenagers prepare for the SAT and helped low income Harlem residents file their taxes. Now she is retired and very happy learning Japanese and Korean (yes it is crazy, but not as much as it sounds) and dabbling in sculpture, creating works that reflect nature’s beauty, using bronze, stone and wood. She is not a biker (more of a runner, they are good people too). But here is the important part finally: she believes in giving children and people around the world a bit of help to make a better life for themselves. 

MICHAEL P. CARSON

Board member. Michael is a non-profit executive who has devoted his career to social and economic development. He is currently the Executive Director of the Women’s Institute for Secondary Education and Research (WISER) International. Michael’s technical assistance and strategic advice as an executive and consultant has helped transform small businesses, community-led health clinics and schools, and agriculture enterprises in conflict settings and emerging economies. Under Michael’s leadership in Senegal, Africare transformed its development program by spearheading Africare’s successful return to the Casamance region, which was recovering from a twenty-five years old civil war, by starting agriculture, natural resource management and health initiatives. Michael has a certificate in non-profit management from Stanford University’s Social Innovation Review, and a mid-career Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

ERIKA ELVANDER

Board member. Erika Elvander retired from federal service in April 2025, after having worked on health and health policy for the U.S. government for over two decades. Among her assignments, she was the Bureau Chief for East Asia and the Pacific for CDC’s Global Health Center, and the HHS Health Attaché assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing from May 2021- December 2024. During her tenure she was the senior advisor to Mission leadership on US-China health cooperation and worked with allies and partners to strengthen health networks. Prior to arriving in China, she was the Director for Asia and the Pacific at HHS’s Office of Global Affairs for nearly a decade. In this role she fostered critical global relationships within the Asia Pacific region, coordinating international engagement across HHS and the U.S. government, and providing leadership and expertise in global health diplomacy and policy to contribute to a safer, healthier world. She began her career at HHS supporting bilateral health cooperation with Russia and Ukraine, then with China and East Asia on such diverse issues as pandemic influenza, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), chronic disease, tobacco control, and HIV/AIDS. She has also developed federal, state, and local government partnerships for the Defense Department and coordinated research on women’s health at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Prior to her federal service, she worked at non-profits, including World Learning, Inc, an NGO devoted to developing international cooperation, and Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington. She holds a B.A. from Williams College, and an M.A. from George Mason University. She loves cycling tourism, most recently taking seven days to wander through the archipelago off the West Coast of Finland. (Moose, her 35 pound Corgi mix remains skeptical of such adventures.) Otherwise she can be found cheering on the Washington Capitals, Mystics, and Nationals and exploring all that the DMV has to offer. She has supported Bikes for the World for over two decades and is delighted to join the board. 

AREND KOUWENAAR

Board member. Arend joined the Board in September 2023. He is a macro-fiscal economist who has worked in academics, at the IMF, and as independent advisor, focusing on low-income developing countries in Africa, while his PhD was on basic needs policy modeling for Latin America. He works currently as advisor for several ministries of finance in Africa, including Rwanda, focusing on capacity building in economic projection/planning and policy analysis.

Arend has served as a volunteer in DC-area NGOs providing support for homeless, immigrants and asylum seekers, including as Board member/treasurer at Luther Place shelter. He has a passion for environmental sustainability and is a decades-long bike/commuter and avid runner and swimmer. He is driven by Bikes of the World’s mixture of environmental concern, development aid, and healthy living and the support it gives to partner organizations becoming ‘models’ in their countries.

JOHN KOWALCZUK

Board member and Treasurer. John recently completed a long career in JPMorgan Chase’s investment bank where he held numerous positions, most recently as head of investment grade risk for the bank’s technology, media and telecommunications portfolio. In that capacity and in prior roles in Leveraged Finance and Credit Portfolio, he executed capital markets, derivatives and acquisition financings for the bank’s largest clients globally as well as for its emerging tech clients. Prior to joining JP Morgan, John worked at the President’s Council on Wage and Price Stability in Washington, D.C. Since retiring, John works as a finance manager at disaster relief sites for the American Red Cross.

John is a cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of George Washington University with a BA in Economics and a MBA in Finance and International Business from NYU’s Stern School of Business, where for many years he also appeared as a guest lecturer in Risk. He’s a former mountain biker and lifelong bike commuter starting in D.C. and continuing through his years living in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Westchester and Texas. John has four grown children who are also avid cyclists.

WOLFGANG McGAVRAN

Board member and Secretary. Wolf is an experienced attorney practicing in the area of commercial litigation with an emphasis on technology, energy, and business disputes. He is an avid cyclist who has participated in multiple 150-mile fundraising rides between Austin and Houston, where Wolf lived prior to relocating to DC approximately two years ago. He earned a B.A. in History from the University of Texas at Austin and his J.D. from Tulane University.

SUSAN LEVINE

Board member. Susan is a longtime journalist who worked at some of the nation’s top newspapers as both a reporter and editor. Her career included nearly a quarter-century at The Washington Post, where she helped to lead the National and Foreign desks, in addition to writing about health and social issues, civil rights, the death penalty and mass tragedies. She also spent several years in philanthropy at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, focusing on the country’s childhood obesity epidemic.

A native Texan, she holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree from Columbia University. She now proudly lives in the nation’s capital and runs and bikes there. She and her husband, an avid cyclist, have supported Bikes for the World for more than two decades.

RACHEL OKUN-KOZLOWICKI

Board member. Bio coming soon!