Robin Chase

Robin Chase
Chase in 2008
NationalityAmerican
Alma materWellesley College
MIT Sloan School of Management
Harvard Graduate School of Design
OccupationBusinesswoman
Known forCo-founding Zipcar
SpouseRoy Russell
ChildrenCameron Russell

Robin Chase is an American transportation entrepreneur. She is co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar.[1] She is also the founder and former CEO of Buzzcar, a peer-to-peer car-sharing service, acquired by Drivy.[2] She also started the defunct GoLoco.org,[3] a vehicle for hire company. She is co-founder and executive chairman of Veniam, a vehicle network communications company. She authored the book, Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism.

Early life

The daughter of a US diplomat,[4] Chase spent her childhood moving around the Middle East and Africa. She graduated from Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa, Wellesley College (B.A.), the MIT Sloan School of Management (M.B.A.), and won a Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.[5]

Career

In 2000, Chase co-founded Zipcar with Antje Danielson.[6] In January 2001, Chase fired Danielson after she petitioned Zipcar's board for the ability to make hiring and firing decisions without consulting them.[6] In February 2003, after difficulties in securing additional rounds of funding, Chase was replaced as CEO by the Zipcar board with Scott Griffith.[6]

In addition to Veniam, Chase has served as a board member for the World Resources Institute,[7] and has been since 2014 chairperson of the board for the Nasdaq and TSE listed Tucows Inc.[8]

Formerly, she served on the board of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation,[9] was a member of the World Economic Forum's Transportation Council, a member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship,[10] the US Department of Transportation Intelligent Transportation Systems Program Advisory Committee,[11] the Boston Mayor's Wireless Task Force,[12] and Governor Deval Patrick's Transportation Transition Team.[13]

She has appeared in national media such as the Today Show, The New York Times, National Public Radio, Wired, Newsweek and Time magazines, and has been mentioned in several books on entrepreneurship.

Chase is a proponent for the creation of a wireless mesh network[14] so that end-user devices can create a shared wireless network.[15]

In France she started Buzzcar, now Getaround.com a car sharing system See TED Talk

Awards

Chase has won several awards. She was listed as one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in 2009,[16] received the Massachusetts Governor's Award for Entrepreneurial Spirit, Start-up Woman of the Year, Business Week’s top 10 designers, Fast Company's Fast 50 Champions of Innovation, technology and innovation awards from Fortune, CIO, and InfoWorld magazines, and numerous environmental awards from national, state and local governments and organizations.

References

  1. ^ "The MIT 150: 150 Ideas, Inventions, and Innovators that Helped Shape Our World". The Boston Globe. May 15, 2011. Retrieved August 8, 2011.
  2. ^ "Community-Based Car Rental Service Drivy Grabs Another $8.6 Million, Acquires Buzzcar". 2 April 2015.
  3. ^ "Going Your Way". Newsweek. 4 April 2007.
  4. ^ "A Revolutionary Entrepreneur On Happiness, Money, And Raising A Supermodel". Huffington Post. January 30, 2015. Retrieved February 17, 2024. Being a white well-educated American who doesn't have any immediate family in distress -- that was just like a birthright. What a lucky thing.
  5. ^ "Zipcar creator looks toward bigger challenges". Harvard Gazette. October 21, 2004. Retrieved February 17, 2024. Chase realizes that there is no way to condense a Phoenix or Los Angeles into a version of Manhattan or Hong Kong, but she believes changing people's mind about lifestyle choices is very much worth doing.
  6. ^ a b c Duhaime-Ross, Arielle (April 1, 2014). "Driven: how Zipcar's founders built and lost a car-sharing empire". Retrieved Oct 6, 2023.
  7. ^ "Lyft, Uber, and Others Join Forces to Create More Accessible and Eco-Friendly Cities". Architectural Digest. February 5, 2018. Retrieved February 17, 2024. Zipcar founder Robin Chase (who's also a WRI Board member) affirms to Curbed that the Shared Mobility Principles are an attempt to get state and private actors on the same page
  8. ^ "Robin Chase | Chairperson of the Board of Directors, Director since October, 2014". Retrieved February 17, 2024. Robin Chase is a transportation entrepreneur. She is co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, founded in 2000, the world's leading car sharing network; as well as co-founder of Veniam, founded in 2012, a network company that moves terabytes of data between vehicles and the cloud.
  9. ^ "Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase named to MassDOT board". Biz Journal. November 19, 2014. Retrieved February 17, 2024.|quote=Gov. Deval Patrick said Wednesday that he appointed Robin Chase, the co-founder of Boston-based ride-sharing company Zipcar, to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation board of directors.
  10. ^ "Creation of federal entrepreneurship advisory group a step in right direction". The Oklahoman. July 20, 2010. Retrieved February 17, 2024. Last week U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced the members of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship...The participants on the Council are recognized leaders in entrepreneurship, investing, non-profits, and universities with strong and successful traditions of commercializing research and development.
  11. ^ "Robin Chase, Zipcar". TechCrunch. July 15, 2014. Retrieved February 17, 2024.
  12. ^ "Robin Chase, Founder & Former CEO Of ZipCar, On Leadership And Innovation". Forbes. March 10, 2012. Retrieved February 18, 2024. She is on the Board of the World Resources Institute, the National Advisory Council for Innovation & Entrepreneurship for the US Department of Commerce, and the OECD's International Transport Forum Advisory Board. She also served on the Intelligent Transportations Systems Program Advisory Committee for the US Department of Transportation, the Massachusetts Governor's Transportation Transition Working Group, and Boston Mayor's Wireless Task Force.
  13. ^ "Deval Patrick/Tim Murray Announce Transition Working Groups and Members". Worcester Polytech. November 29, 1006. Retrieved February 18, 2024. Governor-elect Deval Patrick and Lieutenant Governor-elect Tim Murray announced today the creation of 15 Transition Committee issues working groups that will help shape the new administration's policy agenda as it prepares to take office on Jan. 4, 2007.
  14. ^ Schiller, Lauren (March 18, 2016). "The Woman Who Co-founded Zipcar Is Now Building 'an Internet of Moving Things'". Fortune. Retrieved 7 October 2023.
  15. ^ David Weinberger (May 8, 2009). "The Grid, Our Cars and the Net: One Idea to Link Them All". Wired. Retrieved March 7, 2024. 'Cars are network nodes,' she says. 'They have GPS and Bluetooth and toll-both transponders, and we're all on our cell phones and lots of cars have OnStar support services.' That's five networks.
  16. ^ Craig Newmark (April 30, 2009). "The 2009 TIME 100: Robin Chase". Time Magazine. Archived from the original on May 3, 2009. Retrieved May 30, 2010.