The head of People for Bikes believes in the power of two wheels.
GROWING UP IN MITCHELL, South Dakota, Jenn Dice badly wanted a horse. When her parents said no dice to that idea, she decorated her light blue Huffy bike with frills and reins and called it Black Beauty, based upon the horse in the classic novel.
“I loved horses and I loved this bike, so my bike became my horse,” she recalls.
In 2011, she hiked up Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, and biked down to help raise $750,000 for nonprofit WorldServe International.
Today, as president and CEO of People For Bikes (PFB) in Boulder, she and a staff of 36 run the preeminent nonprofit trade association and bicycle advocacy group.
Dice was director of Government Relations at the International Mountain Bicycling Association for 12 years prior to becoming PFB’s CEO in 2020. Outdoor Industries Women’s Coalition (now Camber Outdoors) selected her for its 2013 Pioneering Women leadership award in recognition of Dice’s outstanding commitment to mentoring female colleagues. She was also inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in 2014.
She’s an unabashed advocate of bikes of all types—gravel, mountain, single speed, e-bikes, and more, and has led best practices bicycle tours of European cities in Spain, Denmark, and The Netherlands, where bicycling is a way of life.
Weekends will find Dice enjoying the mountain bike trails around Boulder, or on the city’s network of 300 miles of bikeways, often with her Goldendoodle Lucy riding in her cargo bike.
“I believe in the power of bikes to bring people together, to heal communities, and to change the world,” she says. “Bikes are tools for empowerment and economic development. When people ride, great things happen.” peopleforbikes.org
—Jeff Blumenfeld
