INTRODUCING: The 10 people transforming how the world gets around

Business Insider

Business Insider named 10 transportation leaders to its list of 100 people transforming business.
They include the CEO of a self-driving car startup, a prolific airline entrepreneur, and the logistics boss of the biggest retailer in the world.
See the full list of the 100 people transforming business here.

From self-driving and electric cars to scooters and low-cost air travel, the transportation space is in the midst of a massive upheaval.

We’ve identified 10 people in the industry rethinking how we get from A to B and laying the groundwork for the future of transportation.

Read on to see the full list of 10 people transforming transportation.

Profiles by Matt Debord, Mark Matousek, Benjamin Zhang, Graham Rapier, and Rachel Premack.

Aicha Evans, the CEO of Zoox, is developing a bold business model for self-driving cars

Zoox

Aicha Evans joined the autonomous-driving startup Zoox earlier this year and is faced with the challenge of turning promise into reality.

Unlike nearly all its competitors, Zoox intends to create autonomous-driving software and assemble the vehicles it’ll use in an autonomous ride-hailing service it plans to launch in 2020. It’s a tall task for an experienced automaker or a major tech company, let alone a startup founded five years ago. But if Zoox can deliver on its ambitious goals, the rewards could be immense.

Before becoming Zoox’s CEO in February, Evans was the senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Intel, where she led projects that required the integration of hardware and software, one of the primary challenges Zoox will face as it brings its technology to market.

Evans is also the rare tech CEO who isn’t a white man. Born in Senegal, she was drawn to Zoox by its transformative potential.

"When you’re a young girl from Senegal and you end up sitting in my shoes, impact and meaning is very important," she told Business Insider. "I wake up every morning and I’m in a hurry to get here."

Pam Fletcher, the vice-president of global innovation at General Motors, is helping the 110-year-old automaker make electric cars

Jordan Strauss/Invision for The Hollywood Reporter/AP

General Motors thinks the future is electric. Pam Fletcher’s charged with helping the US carmaker get there.

The GM veteran has nearly two decades’ experience with the company, and in October she was named vice president of global innovation, having previously overseen GM’s electric-vehicle programs.

Fletcher is close to CEO Mary Barra and was given the challenging task of developing and launching the all-electric long-range Chevy Bolt on a breakneck schedule.

The vehicle was designed to sell for under $40,000 and deliver over 200 miles on a single charge. Debuted as a concept car at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show and revealed in production form at CES in 2016, the Bolt went on sale in October 2016, beating the Tesla Model 3 to market by more than a year.

But there was a point when Fletcher and the GM electric-vehicle team weren’t sure the Bolt could hit its range target. They expressed their doubts to Barra. "I know you can do this," Barra said. And Fletcher and her team could. The production Bolt shattered expectations, capable of nearly 240 miles.

Rachel Holt, the head of new mobility at Uber, is helping people live car-free

Joe Scarnici:Getty Images for Fortune

Backed by nearly $20 billion in venture capital and with a giant IPO expected in the coming weeks, perhaps no company is better prepared to plot the future of transportation than Uber.

And Rachel Holt, head of new mobility at the company, is a key part of that effort, as the ride-hailing giant looks beyond traditional ride hailing.

The 36-year-old has been around since the company’s earliest days, in 2011, when she joined Uber to oversee its Washington, DC, launch.

Today, less than a year after its purchase of Jump Bikes, the company is expanding its transit footprint by adding public-transportation options inside the app, including schedules and mobile ticketing.

"Our vision has always been about helping people live car-free in cities," Holt told Business Insider. "We see our ride-haling business as a core part of that, but we also recognize that there are certain times and places in which a car simply doesn’t make sense. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to live in their city car-free."

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