Samantha Ollinger

Samantha Ollinger is the founder of Bike San Diego, a non-profit cycling advocacy organization whose mission is to transform San Diego’s streetscape to be a world-class, bicycle-friendly city. As the Executive Director, Ollinger sees San Diego exemplifying the ideal urban city that civic leaders around the world can only aspire to. Bicycling is one of the many avenues to lead San Diego onto the world-stage and BikeSD is committed to changing and executing the city’s narrative that will drive this transformation. Ollinger immigrated to the U.S. from India a year before turning 18 and simultaneously curses and blesses the experience that came with experiencing her final year of high school within the American public school system in the heart of Amish country.
A graduate of Temple University with a Business Administration degree with a focus on Accounting, Ollinger sees herself as a lifelong learner driven by insatiable curiosity and sees societal inequities and problems solvable via human intellect, empathy and a lot of compassion.
An advocate for open source software, local and sustainable food, and an avid reader, Ollinger lives with her husband and hundreds of compost worms (in a worm bin) in City Heights, San Diego.