Meet Sandra Phillips, RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards Innovation Finalist

Sandra Phillips is an international thought leader in shared and urban mobility. Since 2010, she has been involved in over 80 global projects through her company, movmi, increasing transportation options while reducing dependency on private car ownership. In Metro Vancouver, Sandra has led stakeholder engagement and service design for TransLink’s multimodal efforts since 2017. Her work combines public transport with local carshare providers like Evo and Modo, as well as Mobi bikeshare. Internationally, she has supported clients such as Transport for London, the Ministry of Mobility in Luxembourg, PayByPhone, and CDTA in their efforts to expand services and integrate shared mobility.

Sandra’s focus on designing and planning multimodal transportation ecosystems has garnered her a TED Talk, a Clean50 award, and the 2021 Change Maker Award by BCBusiness. She was selected as a shared mobility expert with the Canadian Council of Academies on the future of autonomous, electric, and shared transportation in Canada, and is a part-time lecturer at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Sandra advocates for both shared mobility and workforce diversification in transportation. She is a jury member for the C40 Women for Climate network and UITP, and launched the EmpowerWiSM award, which recognizes female founders in transportation and shared mobility.

Entrepreneurship is made for me because…  I’m a changemaker at heart — there are so many things in our communities that are broken, and entrepreneurship has allowed me to build the world into something that I want myself and my children to live in.  

The impact I hope to make through my work is… to provide people of all walks of life with the ability to move conveniently, affordably, and sustainably. If we can do that, then not only do we provide physical mobility, but social mobility as well. 

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned on my entrepreneurial journey is… that creating true impact takes time, dedication, and a network of like-minded folks.  

My proudest accomplishment is… RideLink—connecting different, sometimes even competing, shared mobility services with public transport into one seamless app using the existing public transport farecard as a basis.

The biggest risk I took that paid off was… relocating to the Middle East for three and a half months to work with a handful of enthusiastic startup founders in building the region’s very first carshare. ekar is now the largest carshare provider in the Middle East, and it was movmi’s first international project. It really put our company on the map.

My biggest setback has been… the COVID-19 years. With nobody wanting to move, shared mobility was challenged and movmi’s business model was severely threatened. 

I overcame it by… staying relevant to our clients by sharing free resources, and building the Shared Mobility COVID-19 Task Force to share best practices from operators across the globe. It kept movmi top of mind. 

The best advice I’ve received as an entrepreneur was… “No large company or city will ever hire movmi, they will go with large consulting firms.” Telling me what I cannot do just fuels my ambition. 

I surprise people when I tell them… I was a punk rocker in my teenage years. I guess I still have a bit of that ethos in me — wanting to take direct action to change our world for the better. 

If you googled me, you still wouldn’t know… I read about 30 books every year.

The future excites me because… we’re at the precipice of real change in urban sustainable mobility. It’s no longer about one mode — the car — but many different forms that meet the needs of everyone.

Connect with Sandra on LinkedIn.