2020 SJ Brooks Scholarship

For the 2020 SJ Brooks Scholarship, we received 200 applications, and the reality is that there were more qualified applicants than we had scholarships to give. Thank you to all who applied and shared parts of yourselves with honesty, vulnerability, and badassery.

Through selecting these sixteen individuals the SJ Brooks Scholarship Committee and RAR team sought to honor diversity in race, gender, and class within the cycling community. We believe that these recipients embody cyclists who use the bicycle as a powerful tool for liberation, transformation, community, and mental health.

In memory of SJ Brooks, join us in celebrating the recipients!

Supported by

Thank you to the cycling community and industry for showing up and raising $20k for the scholarships. Your financial donation allowed recipients to get $1k-$2k cash stipends for their spirited endeavor and helped support a scholarship committee to oversee the application process.

A total of 9 bikes were provided to recipients; 4 bikes from Specialized Bikes, 2 bikes from Kona Bikes, 2 bikes from Surly Bicycles, and 1 e-bike from Bosch eBike Systems. We also received cycling and camping gear packages valued at $3k! These combined contributions allowed us to offer up to 18 scholarships specifically for BIPOC FTWN-B cyclists!

Scholarship Committee

We were stoked on the 2020 SJ Brooks Scholarship Committee’s expertise and guidance for the scholarship.

Olivia Williams, Río Oxas, Katelyn Rivas, and Danielle Lundgren co-created the application, review submissions, and selected the candidates alongside the RAR team for the SJ Brooks Scholarship. We were also grateful to have a few former scholarship recipients on the committee to pay it forward to the next generation of recipients.

Thank you, Karla Robles and Daniel Zaid for the Spanish translation of the application.

Who was SJ Brooks?

SJ was an experienced cyclist in the community. A community organizer, beloved by many, SJ was the founder of the Seattle chapter of Friends on Bikes, a social cycling group for BIPOC who identify as women, trans, femme, or non-binary. SJ was scheduled to speak about Friends on Bikes as part of the queer people of color panel at the 2018 WTF Bikexplorers Summit in August. On May 19, 2018, SJ was fatally attacked by a cougar while biking just outside Seattle. SJ’s death was a massive loss to the cycling community. They were a positive light who worked tirelessly to create change. By naming the scholarships after SJ, we hope to honor and pass on their legacy to future radical adventure riders.