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Vice President of Business Development Mike Norvell
I joined VPSI in July of 1984 equipped with a freshly printed degree in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia and an overly idealistic enthusiasm to “do something” to protect and improve our environment. The transition from naive, tree-hugging Eagle Scout (yes, I can still recite the Scout Laws) to a more pragmatic, results-focused transportation demand management professional was facilitated by the training and mentoring I received from my boss at VPSI's Washington, DC office, Steve Pederson. Peds, as we affectionately call him, infused me with the can do attitude that still permeates the Company to this day. Coupled with the fact that VPSI's offices were embedded within the Government Sales and Government Relations offices for Chrysler Corporation on Connecticut Avenue, I was privileged to have a front row seat as VPSI evolved into a nimble, entrepreneurial company with the discipline and resources of a major corporation.
A year later I traded in my Metro pass and the cherry blossoms around the DC Mall, to move to Hartford, CT to manage VPSI's operation there. As the son of a career military officer, I was accustomed to, and had grown fond of, moving and learning about different places and cultures. While I had lived throughout the eastern US and in Germany from 1971 – 1976, I had never lived in California. Repeatedly pestering VPSI's executive management paid off, and I was given the opportunity to open a new office for VPSI in South San Francisco in January of 1986. For two and half years, my wife and I enjoyed everything northern California had to offer from skiing in Tahoe to wine tasting in Napa. VPSI's program, stimulated in no small part by an innovative new policy of allowing high occupancy vehicles to cross the Golden Gate or the San Francisco/ Oakland Bay Bridges without paying the tolls, coupled with deeply discounted parking for vanpools in downtown San Francisco, flourished and grew rapidly.
In mid 1988, we moved to Richmond, VA where I opened another new office for VPSI and, after a few years of developing our partnerships with VDOT, Ridefinders and the Greater Richmond Transit Company, executed a NTD report relationship which has been in place for well over a decade. During my ten year tenure in Richmond I served as VPSI's Northeastern Regional Manager, Eastern Area Manager, and finally Director of Operations, Planning and Development, before being bitten, once again, by the travel bug.
In April of 1997, Jeff Henning and I attended the first ever European Conference on Mobility Management in Amsterdam where we were both astounded by Europe's comprehensive fixed-route transit services and stunned by the near total absence of more nimble, demand responsive solutions like vanpooling. In February of 1998, Jeff and I negotiated the acquisition of Vipre BV, at the time a purely bus-based employee transportation service, from Philips Electronics and my family and I moved to the Netherlands shortly thereafter. As General Director – Europe, I was responsible for integrating the vanpooling program into our product and service mix and all European operations of VPSI's subsidiary companies: Vipre BV, Vipre – UK Ltd., and Vipre – Ireland. After a little more than three of the most personally and professionally rewarding years of my life, we repatriated back to Richmond, VA where we continue to reside today.
In July, 2001 I was promoted to serve as Vice President, Business Development with responsibility for the Company's national and international expansion. Today, working with a dedicated team of business development and marketing professionals we share in the joy and responsibility of promoting one of life's rare win-win-win propositions. While vanpooling was not even in my lexicon while studying environmental sciences in college, it gives me great pleasure to see the tremendous fuel savings, congestion mitigation and greenhouse gas emissions reductions that sustainable transportation solutions like our vanpool fleet of over 5,000 vehicles delivers each and every working day.
