Sliding Doors: When We Almost Blew the Citi Bike Proposal

Meet Behind-the-Scenes Heroine Natalie Lozano

Dear Fabulous Female Founders,

Behind the scenes of successful founders, you find excellent people in leadership roles that make your business soar: CFOs, CTOs, COOs, etc… Today’s FFF offers tribute to one of these heroines, Natalie Lozano, who has just moved on after 15 years as the Marketing Director/VP for my former consulting company, Alta Planning + Design. As you’ll learn, without Natalie, CitiBike may very well have ended up in another firm’s hands.  

Natalie joined us in 2009, just after we’d let go of a fellow who missed a deadline to turn in materials for an on-call list in a nearby suburb. We were perfectly lined up to do this work; we’d authored the underlying trails plan and knew the projects and client well. Missing this deadline not only cost us millions, but opened the door to several competitive design firms. The guy was so nonchalant about it that we felt no remorse in showing him the door.

The silver lining: the opportunity to replace him with the fabulous, unshakable, unstoppable, Natalie.

At that time, we had around 50 staff spread among 11 or 12 offices, lots of templates and graphics on various people’s hard drives, and no solid systems for tracking or producing proposals. Within short order, Natalie synthesized workflow, ensuring every proposal looked professional, showcased our work and people, met every bureaucratic requirement, and was within the page limit, on the right kind of paper (recycled, possibly, or single- or double-sided). Or it might have to be submitted electronically, or broken into specific sections, with a price proposal in a sealed envelope, with key signatures notarized. And of course, on time.

She is one of the fittest people you will ever meet, always dressed in sporty casual work clothes. No matter what was going on, 10 proposals due in a week, a project manager who hadn’t gotten her a critical section, printer on the fritz, or internet out of commission, she’d still be smiling, problem solving, moving everything along.

About two years after she joined us, NYC released an RFP for the massive bike share system soon to be known as CitiBike. At this point, we’d launched bike share in Melbourne, Washington D.C., and Boston, all in collaboration with our Montreal-based supplier, PBSC, who’d said they’d lead. But something happened–we weren’t sure what–and suddenly, with the deadline looming, PBSC pulled back, forcing us to step up or forgo the opportunity.

Sure, Natalie said, clamping on her Wonder Woman bracelets, let’s go.

That RFP was a beast: executive summary; project understanding; technical proposal, 20 attachments; sample site plans; bike, station, database, and computer specifications; plans for maintenance, fleet redistribution, and promotion; service level agreements; milestones; references; tax information; doing business forms; conflict of interest denials; an 83-page Demand Model; pitches from subcontractors; and a detailed business model. Natalie split herself into pieces to wrestle all the parts into submission, checking and rechecking, barely sleeping, a Tasmanian Devil whirlwind up and down the Alta stairs. All in all, the 374-page beast resembled a colorful home furnishings catalog, with inserts and divider tabs, times 10 copies.

To get from our office to Fedex took a leisurely 10 minutes, most times of most days, a half mile at best down to the Willamette River and over the Morrison Bridge. At 4:45 p.m., Natalie mounted her bike, the 20-pound paper tome securely zipped in her backpack, plenty of time to  meet the 5:00 p.m. deadline for next day east coast delivery, or so it seemed. 

Just a block from our office, she heard the bong bong bong of an oncoming freight train, sped up to try to beat the train, arrived at the crossing just as the gates were coming down, decided in a split second not to risk her life, and consoled herself with the thought that at least the train was moving. The second the gates lifted, she rocketed over the bridge in hyperspeed, arriving at 5:05, just as the Fedex driver was pulling away.

Another person would have wilted in this moment, curled up in a ball and wished for a speedy demise to avoid the shameful honor of having blown the most important deadline in our company’s history. Thankfully, Natalie was not that person.

Natalie had a back-up plan. (She always had a back-up plan.)

Back at the office, she got in touch with a NYC-based subcontractor; they would print and package the beast all over again and hand deliver it to the NYC procurement office by noon the next day. You know the rest: we won the contract, leading to the launch of CitiBike in May of 2013, the transformation and sale of our company, and the opportunity for me to exit a wealthier and wiser woman.

Natalie elevated to Vice President and became the second female owner of Alta Planning + Design. Thanks in part to her marketing prowess, Alta Planning + Design expanded to 200 people in 20+ offices, while Alta Bicycle Share launched eight systems in N. America and Australia before being acquired. She earned an MLA from Harvard’s extension school in 2023, is a Master Gardener, and speaks fluent Japanese.

Wishing Natalie all the best in her future endeavors,

-FFF