Joining Zum To Help Change Student Transportation
A Welcome Letter from Zum’s New EVP of School Transportation, Liz Sanchez
Having been in the student transportation industry for over 30 years, I’ve had the opportunity to see it inside and out. What I have loved about the industry — and the reason why I’ve stayed in it for so many years — is first and foremost, the impact we make in the lives of students, our future, and secondly, the people who work tirelessly to make that happen everyday. Student transportation is literally an essential service woven into the daily life and fabric of American society. I would say, to work on such a massive and critical human need has been an honor and a privilege.
What piqued my interest and brought me to Zum is that it is addressing a gap that has been largely unaddressed in the student transportation industry – technology. While, in the past few years, we have all seen so many advancements in the mobility and logistics space, yet somehow student transportation, despite it being the largest mass transportation system and such an essential service, lagged far behind. The past couple of years have only brought this need for digitization and agility in student transportation to the forefront and I strongly believe Zum is the catalyst for this change that the industry so desperately needs.
I am very excited about the work we are doing at Zum at the intersection of education, transportation and sustainability. In my new role, I will be helping the company scale up their operations and bring our modern solution to hopefully every school district across the U.S. Our focus on modernizing the safety in student transportation – using technology and data coupled with people and processes to make approach to safety proactive rather than reactive – is a massive opportunity. Electrification of the school fleet is another great and mostly unexplored territory of the industry and I like how Zum is approaching it. Lastly, I have always been a proponent of people and culture and love how Zum is going about it in a deliberate and thoughtful way and it will be a lot of fun to strengthen and scale this approach as we continue to build the company.
This is going to be a fun and exciting ride! There is no status quo. We are building from scratch and reimagining the future of student transportation. I am thrilled for myself, the company, the industry and even more about the legacy that we all will leave behind!