Kim Raney, Oakland Unified School District’s transportation director, Pallav Prakash, Zum’s director of electrification program management, and Vivek Garg, co-founder and COO of Zum, pose in Oakland’s new electric bus facility.
Innovator of the Year Vivek Garg, the co-founder and COO of Zum
Services, commented that leaders can be tech- nologically sound experts in their field or adept at motivating teams to execute the plans laid out before them. Dr. Pallav Prakash, STN’s Innovator of the Year, is both. “You will realize he is a constant learner,” Garg said, adding that Prakash seeks knowledge from everyone in the company as well as from partners. “That’s a founder mindset, that’s an innovator’s mindset.” Garg noted that Prakash is often the smartest person in the room but also extremely humble. “He comes from a very unique background,” Garg said, adding that Prakash’s thrived as an electric subma- rine commander in one of the most challenging and isolated environments one can encounter. Kim Raney, the transportation director for Zum
customer Oakland Unified School District in Califor- nia, said Prakash doesn’t see roadblocks. Instead, he figures out a way to get around obstacles and make a solution work. While he said he is grateful to receive the title of
Innovator of the Year, Prakash noted that it took an “ecosystem” to get here. A common term in the high-tech industry, a business ecosystem, first defined by James F. Moore’s 1996 book “Death of Competition,” combines a network of organizations that work together through competition and coop- eration to deliver a product or service. “The agencies, companies, regulators, utilities, all of those partnered with me,” he said, adding that he views himself as simply the face of the Oakland project and of the Innovator Award in general. Instead he said he wants to dedicate the award to
tion program management for Zum Services, Inc., and the School Transportation News 2024 Innovator of the Year. “He’s always putting my kids first and he really advo-
cates for Oakland,” Raney said, adding that the district started contracting with Zum in 2017. “And not everybody wants to advocate for [the district] but these are exactly the kids [that need it]. And I think he embodies equity be- cause Oakland is exactly who you would consider when you’re doing something like this project. They could have done it in San Francisco, they could have done it in other places. But my kids and our kids really deserve this.” Vivek Garg, the co-founder and COO of Zum, add-
everyone he works with at Zum, to Raney, the Oak- land students she oversees transportation service for, to all who partnered with them to make it happen, and to his own family for their support. “I must tell you that they are the real heroes in
this system, who generally go unrecognized … For me this is a humbling experience. It reinforces my faith into a system that has given me an opportunity to do something and to vote for a cause and help the future generation enjoy a better today.”
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