Valerie Smith is the Director of Road Safety Programs at Parachute. She oversees and manages all of Parachute’s road safety and safe mobility initiatives. She also helps to support and mobilize Parachute’s Vision Zero network, made up of stakeholders from across Canada.
Through the implementation of Vision Zero and safe systems approaches in Canada, she has worked with municipal, provincial/territorial and federal levels of government. She has led our team in developing multiple cutting-edge Vision Zero resources. She continues to spread awareness and advocates for road safety by responding to media interviews and presenting at national and international conferences. In 2022, Valerie was awarded Ontario’s Road Safety Professional of the Year award by the Ministry of Transportation in Ontario. She is also president of the Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals (CARSP) and a lead for the Ontario Vision Zero Aliance.
Prior to working with Parachute, Valerie was a senior program manager at a number of charities, including Smartrisk, Katimavik and Youth Challenge International. She spent a substantial part of her career working on HIV/AIDS programs in South America and East Africa. She holds an MA in international and comparative education.