Top 10 Mobility as a Service Influencers

As Mobility-as-a-Service starts to become more common in the fleet and automotive industry’s vocabulary, we take a look at some of the people who are shaping what MaaS actually means. Our top 10 Mobility as a Service influencers come from all over the world and have unique specialisms in how MaaS is implemented e.g. Mobility as a Service for business, MaaS for urban transport, MaaS for the environment. These are our top 10 influencers:

Warwick Goodall

@WheresWarwick

Working as a Director for Deloitte’s Public Sector Technology division, Warwick is a leading influencer on mobility-as-a-service and how this may be implemented across the transport network. Backed with experience delivering IT transformation strategies and project management of multi-million pound government and private sector projects, Warwick is no stranger to the issues that mobility-as-a-service aims to tackle.

Warwick has long spoken at industry conferences and written on the subject of mobility-as-a-service. His latest article, published for Deloitte, is widely agreed as one of the most informative content pieces online.

Sampo Hietanen

@sampohietanen

Widely acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of Mobility-as-a-Service, Sampo is the founder and CEO of the incredibly successfully MaaS Global company based in Finland. Coming from a ITS and civil engineering background, Sampo has spearheaded multiple new business models and technology in the transport industry. The most relevant to Mobility-as-a-Service being Whim App which recently secured some 10 million Euros in a partnership with Toyota.

Hietanen firmly believe that “in the future, you will be able to move anywhere, at any time and by any mode of transport without needing to own a vehicle”. MaaS Global aims to “build a global roaming system for transport which people can use to travel from, say, Helsinki to Brussels, using one app. Strategic investments ensure that we are among the first in this mobility revolution.”

Justin Whitston

@justinwhitston

Justin is regarded as a go to innovator across the technology space in the corporate vehicle hire, leasing and mobility sector. Having delivered SAAS products to the sector since 2001 he has devised, led and sold multiple business mobility technologies such as Nexus Vehicle Rental, IRIS, RAC Businessclub.

In 2012 he founded and now leads Fleetondemand as a multi-platform mobility technology company that connects thousands of business people every day to vehicle rental, car leasing and business travel services globally. His new platform Mobilleo is the first of a kind MAAS platform dedicated to business.

Claus von Hessberg

@ClausVHessberg

The Sydney based CEO and Founder of Mobility-as-a-Service technology company – SkedGo partners up with other companies and governments to help integrate with other transport and mobility services. Primarily working on the SkedGo API, von Hessberg provides access to over 800 public and private transport services across 200 cities and 10 countries. SkedGo have also launched their own personal transport app – TripGo – with the objective of unifying all mobility options into one simple app that can provide a door to door itinerary in just a few clicks.

Claus von Hessberg saw previous success in the Rio Olympics Transport Challenge that saw the TripGo team launch a specialised Rio app called RioGo to respond to the news of the half a million Olympic fans who arrived at Rio de Janeiro for the 31st Summer Olympics. von Hessberg’s app won in the “Experience the Olympics” category and proved to be a huge success.

Beate Kubitz

@BeateKubitz

After working in shared transport she joined the board of TravelSpirit (TravelSpirit is an openly governed community and source code commons for collaborative open source projects supporting Mobility as a Service products and services), and is a consultant for a number of organisations.

Beate recently authored an excellent report on the state of mobility-as-a-service for Landor which compiled thoughts on MaaS across the most established thought leaders in the industry.

Manel Villalante

@MVillalante

The Spanish mobility expert has over 30 years experience in the transport industry with both the public and private sector. Manel’s past employment boasts positions such as General Director of Land Transport at the Spanish Government, President at Catalunya Car Sharing and his current position as Director of Mobility and Transport Infrastructure at Barcelona Regional.

Passionate about mobility-as-a-service and the impact this will have both private and public, Manel is always active on Social Media on topics regarding MaaS and is constantly on the look out for MaaS innovation.

Paul Hollick

Paul Hollick, formerly chief commercial officer at Alphabet, is Managing Director at The Miles Consultancy (TMC). TMC is a leading provider of fuel management and business mobility solutions with a UK based customer service team and data management specialists that service European clients in all languages. Paul helps lead the strategic development of the product at TMC and is crucial for shaping their approach to Mobility-as-a-Service.

Paul also sits as a member of the Council for the Institute of Car Fleet Management where he brings his vast experience working with fleet automotive big hitters such as Inchcape and Alphabet. The Institute is responsible for identifying changing mobility and fleet trends as well as actively educating the fleet sector in the development of new skills and techniques.

Maria Kamargianni

@KamargianniCcm

Maria holds a PhD in Travel Behavior Modeling and Decision Sciences. She completed her PhD studies at the Department of Shipping, Trade and Transport of the University of the Aegean (Greece). She also holds a Masters in Shipping, Trade and Transport, specialisation path: Intermodal Transport and New Technologies, from the same University.

As a lecturer in Transport & Energy at University College London’s Institute, Maria is a leader for pioneering the FS-MaaS project that looks to bring mobility-as-a-service to London.  The objective of the FS-MaaS project is to propose the design of a Mobility as a Service concept for London, the MaaS-London, and examine its feasibility. The MaaS-London is an integrated platform that includes registration and package selection, intermodal journey planning, booking, smart ticketing and payment functions so that the entire chain of transport can be managed in this centralised platform.

Andy Taylor

@AndyMobility

As Director of Strategy for Cubic and a board member on the Mobility as a Service Alliance, Andy Taylor is a familiar figure in the MaaS community. With over 25 years of experience in the transportation sector, Taylor has worked all over the world on transportation projects such as work for the UK Department of Transport and Cubic Transportation Systems. It is in his current role that Andy has worked constantly on developing Mobility as a Service analysis models to help encourage cities to invest more in MaaS systems.

Ever present on Social Media networks, Andy is always sharing and creating some of the best MaaS content online and is a regular at industry conferences where he educates audiences on the benefits of Mobility as a Service.

John Pryor

John is the current chairman of the ACFO. ACFO is the UK’s premier representative organisation for fleet decision-makers in charge of cars and light commercial vehicles. The organisation exists to help fleet decision-makers improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their business travel operation. Established more than 40 years ago, ACFO’s membership includes most of Britain’s major fleets as well as those drawn from the SME sector. ACFO is a volunteer-led organisation that exists to help fleet decision-makers deal with key issues impacting on the operating efficiency and effectiveness of their vehicle operations – both company owned and ‘grey fleet’ vehicles.

Pryor is also Fleet and Travel Manager at Arcadia Group  where he has headed up their business mobility operations for 27 years.

Didn’t make our list or didn’t see someone you expected? Contact info@businessmaas.com and let us know so we can add them to our ongoing Mobility-as-a-Service influencer list.