Jennifer Ross – is a director and founding partner of Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design, a multidisciplinary firm of architects planners and urban designers, based in Southwark.
The focus of Jennifer’s work has been in London and she has led a number of the practice’s complex regeneration and planning jobs, including the development of planning frameworks for Elephant and Castle, Enfield and Ilford and securing planning consents for a number of large scale, multi phased developments including the award winning Brentford Lock West, Sellar’s development in Canada Water, a number of high profile schemes for PegasusLife, co-working spaces for Second Home and Workspace and Derwent’s White Collar Factory and the regeneration of a number of significant Council owned estates in Hackney, Camden, Enfield and Tower Hamlets.
Working with her other directors we have recently managed the transfer of Tibbalds to an Employee Ownership Trust.
Trustee since 2014
How did you first get involved with Club Peloton?
I always knew about the ride to MIPIM but thought I could never do it BUT with the help of a number of veterans of the early rides I was persuaded . I did my first ride in 2011 and then did four other MIPIM rides in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. As part of the experience I was always struck by how few women participated and yet I felt many of my female friends could do it and would benefit greatly from the experience of riding and of networking with other people from the industry. So we set up the pedElle in 2013 and 25 of us, with the help of Club Peloton (then C2C), rode from London to Paris. Five annual rides followed on from the first ride and the ride has grown from strength to strength.
Over the course of all of this riding many of the riders talked about all of the rides being brought under one banner and becoming more of a membership club. After much conversation Club Peloton replaced C2C and a strategy was formulated to take Club Peloton to the next stage and the rest is hopefully history!
How many bikes do you have?
Three, two identical road bikes (Condor Barrachi) – one for the country and one for town (way overindulgent, but too stressful trying to put a bike on South west trains every weekend) and a sit up and beg dutch bike for riding around town.
What’s your best cycling memory?
Hmmm probably the first pedElle and to see so many people who have never ridden before ride into Paris and complete our first big journey and then the ride I most look forward to doing every spring is the northern coastal ride from Pollenca to Andratx in Mallorca.
Have you done any business because of one of our rides?
Yes many of my friends and business colleagues are drawn from cycling. I have worked on projects with Paul Karakusevic, Alex Ely, Joe Morris, Pat Hayes, Brendon Walsh, Chris Horn and John Nordon – relationships that directly and indirectly can be traced back to Cycle to MIPIM. In relation to pedElle, however I joined forces with five other women riders and entered an International Competition run by the National Infrastructure Commission to come up with innovative ways to deliver new, well designed housing growth in the Oxford to Cambridge corridor in 2017. Based on many conversations had on the bike we came up with VeloCity, which seeks to grow a series of linked and connected ‘smart’ villages around new rail stations. A central part of the strategy involves a shift to more sustainable modes of transport- a key part of which obviously involves the delivery of a high quality, safe and well designed cycle infrastructure, the delivery of integrated digital networks, local energy generation and measures to limit the consumption of resources, whilst at the same delivering high quality places to live and work. The ideas competition has struck a chord and we have been speaking at a number of high profile events about how to deliver the strategy. I think the process has also helped to raise the profile of the pedElle, Club Peloton and women working in the industry generally.

