Robin Chase | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Wellesley College MIT Sloan School of Management Harvard Graduate School of Design |
Occupation | Businesswoman |
Known for | Co-founding Zipcar |
Spouse | Roy Russell |
Children | Cameron 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.
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]
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
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.
The Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, as well as executive education. Its degree programs are among the most selective in the world. MIT Sloan emphasizes innovation in practice and research. Many influential ideas in management and finance originated at the school, including the Black–Scholes model, the Solow–Swan model, the random walk hypothesis, the binomial options pricing model, and the field of system dynamics. The faculty has included numerous Nobel laureates in economics and John Bates Clark Medal winners.
Zipcar is an American car-sharing company and a subsidiary of Avis Budget Group. Zipcar provides vehicle reservations to its members, billable by the minute, hour or day; members may have to pay a monthly or annual membership fee in addition to car reservations charges. Gas, maintenance, insurance options, and a dedicated parking spot are included. Zipcar was founded in 2000 by Antje Danielson and Robin Chase.
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Scott Griffith was the chairman and chief executive officer of Zipcar, Inc. from February 2003 until his resignation on March 15, 2013, following the acquisition of Zipcar by Avis Budget Group. As of October 2020, Griffith is the CEO of Ford Autonomous Vehicles & Mobility Businesses at Ford Motor Company.
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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
'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.