Julienne Chen is the citizen engagement manager at EIT Urban Mobility. EIT Urban Mobility is a European initiative supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology to facilitate the development of innovative transportation solutions.

At EIT Urban Mobility, Julienne oversees a portfolio of citizen engagement projects being implemented by EIT Urban Mobility partners. These projects engage local residents in novel ways, ranging from co-creating with children to using e-participation platforms to generate new ideas and input. She also manages the organisation’s online e-participation platform, based on the open source software Decidim, as well as other initiatives to engage people in behaviour change for sustainable urban mobility. Finally, she is initiating a programe to better incorporate user perspectives into urban mobility solutions being developed by start-ups.

Julienne’s prior experience spans the public, private, non-profit and academic spheres in the US, Singapore, the Netherlands and Belgium. She started as an urban planner before transitioning to City Hall, joining the Mayor’s innovation teams in Los Angeles and Louisville, Kentucky, with the goal of bringing together people, digitalization, design and data to strengthen city services. Julienne spent four years in Singapore as a research fellow, conducting research on a range of topics including bottom-up citizen initiatives and designing and evaluating new (digital) methods for public participation. Most recently, she was a product manager at a start up in Belgium called CitizenLab, an e-democracy platform for governments to engage with the public and bring their voices into policy and decision-making processes.