Watch: Q&A with MJ Carpio, Executive Director at Move Minnesota
After a busy first few months as the new executive director of Move Minnesota and Move Minnesota Action, MJ Carpio sat down with us to share more about her background and passion for our work. The conversation was a great opportunity to learn more about MJ’s first experiences with public transit, what inspires her, and her vision for the coming years—plus what is keeping her energized and grounded outside of work these days.
Watch our short video for highlights from the interview, or read the full Q&A with MJ below!
Watch the Video:
Read the Full Q&A:
You’ve shared that you’re a lifelong public transit rider—where did you grow up and how did transit play a role in your early years?
Yes, I was born in the Philippines, and I grew up there until I was 11 years old. Then I moved to New York City after that. I used public transit both in the Philippines and New York City. I used tricycles and Jeepneys in particular in the Philippines. And then in New York, I mostly rode the subway, but I would bus every now and then. And I borrowed bikes from friends to explore the town.
Did riding transit shape your worldview as a young person and/or influence what you wanted to do when you grew up?
Riding transit definitely shaped my worldview as a young person and influenced what I wanted to do when I grew up. What I mean by that is riding transit is fundamentally a shared experience. It got me thinking more about public goods and the public utility of mass infrastructure, and investments in human-centered design. As I was getting older, I knew I wanted to do something with access but I didn’t always know that it was going to be around public transit. When I moved to Minnesota for school I realized that public transit isn’t always readily available, like it is in New York City, or more communal like in the Philippines. I reflected on how it gave me, my family and friends independence and bonding experiences. Although I took transit, biked, and walked everywhere—it wasn’t until later that I would realize the intersectionalities of public transit access, whether that’s with disability and mobility justice, access to healthcare, or mitigating and adapting to climate change. But transit is one of the most intuitive things to me, and it led me to where I am now.
Speaking of coming to Minnesota for school, what did you study and what did you do when you graduated?
I majored in neuroscience studies at Macalester College. So after college, I worked in a neuroscience lab for three years. It was the third year when I started to explore more community organizing and got my first paying gig as a contract organizer for a nonprofit. But, before that, in college, I had co-founded a student organization called Filipinos at Macalester. I didn’t know at the time that that was called organizing. I was just fighting for representation. I didn’t always have the words to describe the thing that was intuitive to my body. It’s like that for public transit. To me, it’s intuitive that transit is a battleground for so many other fights that people might not think are related but, in fact, they are.
You’ve shared that “Expanding public transit access and building community resilience are personal issues for me.” You spoke to that a bit but is there anything else you’d like to say about why these are personal issues for you?
It’s personal to me because I’ve experienced what it’s like to have a relatively well-functioning, more accessible public transit system in New York City. I’m grateful for the childhood and young adulthood it gave me with a ton of independence. Also, the jeepney experience in the Philippines is quite particular because of its history. Jeepneys evolved from when the Americans were in the Philippines and they left war machinery—including the Jeep. Filipinos repurposed the Jeep to become a public utility vehicle. Then drivers added their own flair. Each jeepney is as unique as the driver. So the jeepney is a symbol of war and colonization, but more so to me, a symbol of resilience, creativity, and community-oriented solutions. And in the Jeepney system, to pay the fare you pass along cash and coins to the person closest to you, and that money travels from one hand to another, to another, and so on until it reaches the driver. Then eventually your change will make its way back to you. I never had to doubt whether my change was going to make it back to me. So, like I said, before moving to Minnesota, I had experienced a greater degree of independence and community-oriented interactions.
What inspired or catalyzed you to get involved in advocacy?
I think, for me, it’s about community-building first and foremost. I don’t think that there’s a better way to build a community than to identify shared issues or interests that affect people. And second is representation—and I mean that in multiple senses. It’s both representation in identity and also representation in issues that are facing a set of people who might not otherwise get heard if they don’t work together. And the third is just this deep sense that people’s lives can be improved—this deep sense that not everybody has a fair chance at “success” or a dignified life.
What do you love about organizing and advocacy around transit specifically?
Like I said, it’s all about the shared experience. Inherently, you are fighting for this public good, this public utility, and there’s a ton of intersections. You know that phrase, “It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey?” What I love about transit advocacy is it’s actually about both. We’re fighting for better travel and commuting experiences, but it’s also an investigation of where you’re coming from and where you’re going to. Transportation gets you to school, to the doctor, grocery store, place of worship, or where you like to go have fun, and meet friends and family. And because of the history of this country, you can map out who has access to transportation options and access to all of those essential things in life. For a lot of people in Minnesota and the country, a lack of access to transportation and another essential thing are not coincidences. Many people are forced to spend more of their time or money on less efficient or less safe ways to travel. What I appreciate about transit advocacy is the way it relates to so many parts of our lives, and every other fight towards social justice, more than people might realize.
You’ve acknowledged that we’re in a moment of defense on many fronts, but what are you most excited about for our region and the state over the next 5 to 10 years?
With the dedicated funding we secured in 2023, which we continue to defend, transit expansion is the number one thing I’m excited about for our region and state over the next 5 years and decades. The Met Council and Metro Transit just approved Network Now, which plans for restoring previously halted services during the pandemic, transit expansion, and increased ridership. It’s gonna be really exciting to see a Network Now 2.0, 3.0, and future iterations of transit planning that would make the metro area more connected. There’s different funding mechanisms, restrictions, and needs between the metro area and Greater Minnesota but the need for transit and mobility access is still the same, so hopefully the work that we do here trickles outward.
The number two thing I’m most excited about for our region is properly rethinking how we build or reclaim our roads and highways. We know about street designs that are proven to increase safety and accessibility for people who walk, bike, and roll. We also know that adding more lanes to a highway is a temporary fix to congestion. Aligning how we build our roads with our greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled reduction goals is not only essential for Minnesotans, but trailblazing for the nation.
Last, but not least, the number three thing I’m most excited about for region and state is making a difference in who shows up for transit advocacy, whether that’s at the capitol or in meetings with local decision makers. We need the people who ride transit to actually be able to show up. It’s gonna be a big challenge because people who take transit may or may not have a lot of time to give or space to share, but it’s important that we’re heard. Transit, biking, walking, and rolling are only gonna become more important in the future because our time to adapt to and mitigate climate change is limited. So hopefully with Move Minnesota and Move Minnesota Action, we can keep educating people about their travel options and invite more people to be part of advocating for public transit and building political power around that.
If you could wave a magic wand and make one thing different about the transit system in the Twin Cities, what would it be?
Transit signal priority. When we’re designing a more efficient way for people to travel, we can’t be putting transit in competition with single-occupancy vehicles in the same way when a bus or train can carry way more people than a car ever could, but they get stuck at the same lights. We need to give our buses and our trains signal priority so that public transit is more attractive to people, so people want to take it because they know it’ll get them to places in a timely manner. It’s a huge disservice to not design a public transit system in a way that’s actually efficient and fast. And it’s not a heavy lift to get signal priority implemented.
Being an Executive Director is a big job; how do you relax when you’re not at work?
Meals with friends is one of the best ways that I decompress: really good food with really good company. In warmer weather, biking, going to the lakes, and sharing snacks and drinks with friends is really nice. And I also enjoy hanging out with my partner, just doing normal people things!
What’s a song or book or poem that’s giving you life right now; maybe something that’s energizing you in challenging times?
I’m actively reading Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning by Vanessa Priya Daniel. It’s about the role women of color in leadership, what they’ve contributed to the fabric of our social justice movements, and what they continue to teach other people about creating positive change that they may not necessarily think about because they’ve never had to deal with the prejudices and challenges that many in our societies have had to deal with as a function of racism, sexism, and classism.