Nancy Smith Lea is the Program Director for the Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation and the Director of Active Transportation at the Clean Air Partnership. Prior to this she was a senior research officer at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto where she was employed between 1990 and 2009. In 2001 she achieved a M.A. in sociology and equity studies (thesis title Cycling Safety: Shifting from an Individual to a Social Responsibility Model). Her articles include Colliding Modes of Transportation: Issues of Inequity and Unsustainability published in the peer-reviewed Environments Journal (2000), Toronto Cyclists Fight for Respect. in the Planners Network Journal (2002), Urban Cycling Safety: Individual or Social Responsibility? published in the National Center for Bicycling and Walking Forum (2003) and Bike Lanes - Good for Us, Our City, and the Bottom Line in Harvey Kalles Collections Magazine Volume 5, Issue 3 (2009).
Smith Lea has been actively involved in working towards improving cycling conditions in Toronto since 1993. She was a member of the Toronto City Cycling Network Planning Committee (1993-96), on the committee formed by the Regional Coroner of Toronto which met over a two-year period to prepare the research and analysis leading to the 1998 coroner’s report on Cycling Fatalities in Toronto, 1986-1996: Recommendations for Reducing Cycling Injuries and Death and provided input into the 2003 City of Toronto’s staff report: Toronto Bicycle/Motor-Vehicle Collision Study. In 2004 she was an expert witness in a court case in which a cyclist, injured by a parked car door opened suddenly in her path, won her lawsuit against the City of Toronto for failing to ensure that the roadway was safely designed for cyclists. She is currently the TCAT representative on the University of British Columbia’s Bicyclists Injuries and the Cycling Environment research team.
Smith Lea was one of the co-founders of Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists (1996-2005), a past board director and treasurer of the Community Bicycle Network (2002-2005) and a founding member and board director of the Toronto Cyclists Union through its first year of operation (2008-2009).