{"id":40800,"date":"2026-05-15T06:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T06:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carsp.ca\/?p=40800"},"modified":"2026-05-15T06:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T06:26:09","slug":"carsp-snn-interview-valerie-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carsp.ca\/en\/news\/carsp-news\/carsp-snn-interview-valerie-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"CARSP SNN Interview \u2013 Valerie Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"Date: <\/b>March 23, 2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Interviewer<\/b>: Dr. Emily McCullogh, York University, CARSP Safety Network Newsletter, Editor<\/span><\/p>\n

Interviewee<\/b>: Valerie Smith is the current Director of Road Safety Programs at Parachute, Canada, and former CARSP president.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Emily<\/b>: Welcome Val! How did you get involved in the road safety world?<\/span><\/p>\n

Val<\/b>: I never really planned to work in road safety, to be fully transparent. It was not an intentional career path for me. My background was in international development, and I did my master's degree at U of T in education with a focus on international development. From there, I spent 12-plus years working overseas. I worked in Central America, South America, Eastern Africa, the Caribbean, and my work was really focused on youth, HIV-AIDS, and broader health programming.
\n<\/span>When I had my daughter, Harper, who's now 16, and I decided to go back to work, I knew I wanted to stay in the charitable sector. I wanted to stay in the health sector, but I wasn't specifically looking for road safety. An opportunity came up for me at an organization called Smart Risk, which was very focused on youth and injury prevention. I applied as a manager of the youth programs, and I was successful in the position.
\n<\/span>Over the years Smart Risk eventually became Parachute. It amalgamated as one of four national organizations. Over time, my portfolio at Parachute just became bigger and bigger in terms of road safety and I moved from manager to director. Eventually, my entire portfolio was road safety and safe mobility. I wouldn't say I'm a technical expert in road safety\u2026 my role is more around strategy, program development, and innovation and figuring out how we can move things forward in our road safety space, bring people together, and create impact.<\/span><\/p>\n

Emily<\/b>: Wow, that's wonderful, and I see this theme throughout your previous work and current work, of wanting to empower marginalized groups, folks that don't have access to resources, or are victims of structural inequities. and all of that. Thank you for sharing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Val<\/b>: Yeah, and it's interesting, because when I started focusing more on road safety our role was very focused on individual behavior change, which is still extremely important, but we were less focused on some of those equity issues and focused more on vulnerable road users. I really love how this space has opened up now, and we are specifically looking at equity. We're looking at who are the most vulnerable folks on our road, and how do we protect them. The space has opened up to be much broader and much more holistic than it used to be.<\/span><\/p>\n

Emily<\/b>: Wonderful. Thank you. So, on that theme, can you tell us a bit about this Road Safety Coalition?<\/span><\/p>\n

Val<\/b>: Yeah. It's the <\/span>Canadian Coalition for the Global Decade of Action for Road Safety<\/span><\/i>. We are heading into the third year of the coalition. Parachute co-leads it with CARSP and the original intent was to align Canada with the Global Decade of Action for Road Safety, which runs from 2021 to 2030. As part of the Global Decade, there's a global plan that came out of that, and it's an excellent framework. It focuses on proven, evidence-based interventions, it is based on a safe systems framework, and it prioritizes things like speed management, protecting vulnerable road users, traffic calming, and also improving helmet and seatbelt use in some of the other countries around the world.
\n<\/span>What we felt was missing in Canada was the support of the Global Decade of Action for Road Safety amongst our civil society and government\u2026 there is no awareness of it. There's a lot of organizations doing important work in mobility and road safety, urban planning, but we're not always speaking with a unified voice, we're not always talking. So, the coalition was about bringing all these groups together to align priorities and amplify impact, aligned with the Global Decade of Action for Road Safety.
\n<\/span>We've made some solid progress. It's been steady, based on capacity and funding, so slow and steady. Over the past couple of years, we've focused on speed, particularly in urban areas. In 2024 and 2025 we took a close look at technologies around speed, automated speed enforcement, as well conversations around vehicle size and safety.<\/span><\/p>\n

Emily<\/b>: That's fascinating. It's such a wonderful step forward to see this coalition formed. One of the significant barriers to getting a built environment changes made, or speed interventions implemented, is sectoral silos. A lot of folks are doing really good work in all these different areas and we're missing the opportunity to really leverage each other's skills and resources, so this seems like a really positive step forward. It's quite uplifting!<\/span><\/p>\n

Val<\/b>: That's a good point, because when we looked at building the coalition, it wasn't just road safety groups. We wanted to look at groups that were very focused on mobility, on building greener, more sustainable communities, cycling communities, so we've got a lot of great organizations that are trying to find similarities in our agendas that we can push forward.
\n<\/span>It's important to mention that one of the big pieces of the global plan is the importance of civil society working with government. The coalition is very much focused on building the relationship between groups working at a national, provincial, territorial, and municipal levels, and working with the government to move progress forward. Civil society does play a strong role and we're hoping that the coalition will help to amplify that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Emily<\/b>: Yes, as well as lessons for collaboration in other sectors too, right? The ripple effects of this are huge, potentially.<\/span><\/p>\n

Val<\/b>: Yeah, absolutely. We still have a lot of growth\u2026 there's other groups we can start trying to leverage. We want to bring in enforcement \u2013 they absolutely play a role. We want to bring in some more research groups, so we have voices from the different sectors represented. There are different NGOs and associations that touch road safety, but they may not even know that they're involved or have a specific goal around road safety, but they do.<\/span><\/p>\n

Emily<\/b>: Wonderful. What advice would you give folks who are interested in pursuing a career in road safety?<\/span><\/p>\n

Val<\/b>: Stay resilient. It's, an amazing sector to work in. It's a tight community of people that are extremely committed and dedicated, but it's not always easy to find work in the field, especially as funding and resources continue to be depleted in Canada, but also all around the world. We're seeing a shrinking space dedicated to road safety and other social justice issues and public health issues. So, stay resilient and open your views a little bit because you may not be able to end up directly in road safety. You might start in public health, and then you may find yourself working in mobility and road safety as you go. So, just being nimble and resilient.<\/span><\/p>\n

Emily<\/b>: Linking this back to the previous question about the coalition, this is another opportunity to see how these skills and this topic can be addressed and leveraged across different sectors, right? Even though you may not see exactly how you fit now, look at the coalition and what it's doing and who they're involved with, and there may be opportunities that one never really thought of or imagined.<\/span><\/p>\n

Val<\/b>: Exactly. ParticipACTION is a member of our coalition, and they're very focused on active living, physical literacy, and a lot of people wouldn't make that direct connection, but the work they're doing does impact mobility and mobility impacts keeping people safe on the roads. There are all sorts of connections that are really important. The more we start to recognize that, the more our opportunities will open up, especially as young professionals.<\/span><\/p>\n

Emily<\/b>: Great. So, we're going to end with the fun question. Can you tell us a fun fact about yourself, Val?<\/span><\/p>\n

Val<\/b>: So, I was thinking about that question, Emily, and I couldn't really think of a funny fact about myself. One of the quirky things about me is that I have a secondary job doing rural real estate. I have a 16-year-old daughter, I ride horses, I work at Parachute, and also volunteer overseas. I have a lot going on in my life. Anyone who knows me will tease me for losing my keys, losing my credit cards, and my phone on a regular basis. I think that would be a quirky and funny fact about me. I\u2019m very good at multitasking and doing lots of different things, but cannot keep my keys accessible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Emily<\/b>: Well, you're doing a lot of important and good work, so I think it's okay to let a few things slip and slide here and there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Val<\/b>: Thanks!<\/span><\/p>\n

Emily<\/b>: Val, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure today having this chat with you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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