The loneliness of the mobility professional

A conversation with Judith O’Meara, Regional Director of EIT Urban Mobility’s Innovation Hub Central.

Interview by Paolo Barbato

Anyone who works on travel and commuting, inside a company or inside a local area, knows a particular form of isolation well. This is a figure who is often alone within their own organisation, where mobility remains a boundary function, and just as alone outside it, where a community of peers to compare notes with is missing. It is an observation that emerged clearly from the working groups on Territorial Coalitions, and from there comes the question running through this conversation: what does a continental network offer today to those who work on mobility alone.

EIT Urban Mobility is the initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, a European Union body, dedicated to urban mobility. Founded in 2019, it works with more than 270 partner organisations and a wider network of 1,200 entities in 33 countries, and operates through five innovation hubs in Amsterdam, Munich, Copenhagen, Barcelona and Prague. Italy falls within the perimeter of the Innovation Hub Central, which is based in Munich and also covers Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland and Türkiye. Judith O’Meara is its Regional Director, and is therefore the European point of reference closest to those working on mobility in Italy.

One useful clarification before reading. Citizens on the Move, the programme mentioned in the conversation, is aimed at people working in public administrations, and the scholarships reserved for Regional Innovation Scheme countries, Italy included, apply within that perimeter. For a corporate Mobility Manager the way in is a different one, and it runs through registration on the Mobility Innovators platform, which happens on request and with approval, through participation in open activities and through direct contact with the Hub Central.

The community as infrastructure

Paolo Barbato: EIT Urban Mobility presents connecting actors as its first activity, even before training and funding. What does this connection mean in practice for an individual professional joining the network, rather than for a partner organisation?

Judith O’Meara: It means no longer facing problems as if they were yours alone. Most of the challenges people working on mobility deal with, from travel demand to resistance to change, have already been faced by someone else in another European city, and the community exists precisely to make that body of experience accessible. For the individual professional, connection is not a list of contacts, but the concrete possibility of asking someone who has already tried a solution how it went, of seeing a real case instead of reading a theory, and of discovering that their own difficulties have a continental dimension and not just a local one.

This value grows even further when the connection is structured, because it helps to strengthen and broaden the dialogue between different actors, the public sector, universities, businesses, startups and research centres. For those working inside a company or a municipality, this means gaining access to skills and perspectives that would be hard to find by staying within their own everyday perimeter.

From working alone to being part of a network

Paolo Barbato: EIT Urban Mobility is structured around five European hubs. What changes for those working on mobility when they move from working alone to being part of a continental network, in terms of access to peers, knowledge and opportunities?

Judith O’Meara: What changes above all is the speed at which you find an answer. Those who work in isolation have to rebuild everything from scratch every time, while those inside a network know who to turn to, and this hugely shortens the timescales and reduces mistakes. The five hubs cover different geographical corridors, and this makes it possible to connect organisations that share similar problems even if they belong to distant countries.

There is then a less tangible but equally important dimension, which is the sense of belonging. Knowing you are part of a wider group changes the way you approach daily work, because it turns a function experienced as marginal within the organisation into a profession with its own community of reference, its own standards and its own opportunities for growth.

Access for an Italian professional

Paolo Barbato: Italy is among the countries eligible for programmes such as Citizens on the Move, and scholarships are available for participants from the Regional Innovation Scheme community. For those operating in Italy, what is the most direct way today to join the EIT Urban Mobility community?

Judith O’Meara: Italy is one of the Regional Innovation Scheme countries, the scheme through which the Institute supports the ecosystems that have historically found it harder to compete in the field of innovation, and this opens concrete doors. The most direct route runs through the programmes designed for professionals, such as Citizens on the Move, which is aimed at people working on urban mobility in public administrations and includes competitive scholarships precisely for participants from RIS countries, Italy among them. Beyond that specific programme, we offer professionals working on urban mobility, in startups, small or large businesses, universities or municipal administrations, the chance to take part in our projects and our activities.

Alongside this, the simplest way to start is to follow the open events and activities, subscribe to the EIT Urban Mobility channels and take part in the moments where people meet. For example, last year we launched Mobility Innovators, our digital platform bringing together more than 2,500 mobility experts, a space in which to compare notes, exchange experiences and stay up to date on the opportunities available. It is precisely from these settings that the relationships arise which then make it possible to enter the network. In Italy there is also a point of reference close to them, the Hub Central, which can be contacted for more information and to understand which opportunities are available to them (central@eiturbanmobility.eu).

Access for those who work in companies

Paolo Barbato: Many of your courses and programmes revolve around urban planning and city officials. How accessible is the community to those who work inside companies on employee travel, rather than inside public administrations or cities?

Judith O’Meara: It is true that historically many programmes have been aimed above all at public officials and at people working on urban mobility planning, because the community grew up around the transformation of cities. However, commuting is precisely one of the areas where the world of companies and the world of cities meet, and someone dealing with employee mobility inside a business brings a very useful perspective to the network.

The value for a corporate professional lies precisely in the exchange: on the one hand they can access methods, tools and experiences developed in the world of public planning; on the other they can contribute the point of view of someone managing mobility demand from the employer’s side.

In addition, EIT Urban Mobility offers specific solutions for corporate mobility, supporting mobility managers in identifying innovative solutions already available on the market, developed in part through the results of our projects and our investment portfolio. This allows companies to tackle their own mobility challenges by drawing on concrete innovations that have already been tested.

What turns a contact into a relationship

Paolo Barbato: Which formats have proved most effective at turning an occasional contact into a lasting professional relationship, whether that is national representatives, events, courses or something else?

Judith O’Meara: The formats that work best are those where people work together on something concrete. The programmes that combine in-person moments, study visits and real cases brought directly by the participants are the ones that manage to create longer-lasting bonds, because they allow people to compare notes on real challenges and not only on theoretical content.

Our partners too organise various moments for meeting during the year, both in person and online, which are important occasions for sharing experiences, exchanging views and creating new connections.

Our internal team, moreover, facilitates contact between people on the basis of their objectives and interests. But a relationship becomes truly solid when the first contact finds a reason to continue over time: a joint project submitted when calls are open, a collaboration, or even simply a periodic exchange on a shared topic. And it is precisely on creating these lasting connections that we work the most.

The European perspective on national policies

Paolo Barbato: EIT Urban Mobility describes itself as part of the largest European network for innovation and links its work to European Union policies. From where you sit, how does belonging to a European community change the way a national professional reads and applies mobility policies in their own country?

Judith O’Meara: It changes the scale at which things are looked at. A professional who works only within their own context tends to read national policies as an isolated fact, while someone who is part of a European network sees them within a wider framework, made up of common directives, shared objectives and comparable experiences. This helps to understand that many Italian challenges are not exceptions, but local variants of problems that the whole of Europe is facing.

There is also a practical effect, because seeing how another country has translated a European objective into concrete measures offers a repertoire of solutions that have already been tested, and makes it possible to avoid mistakes and shorten timescales. European belonging, in this sense, is not a label but an instrument of interpretation that makes the professional more aware and more effective in their own territory too.

Looking ahead

Paolo Barbato: Over the next two years, what would you like the community to come to offer that it still does not offer today, especially for those who feel they are working on mobility in isolation?

Judith O’Meara: I would like the community to become an even more accessible point of reference for those working outside the major centres and the large organisations, because that is where professional loneliness weighs most heavily. I would like anyone working on mobility, even in a small municipality or in a company in the provinces, to be able to find easily someone who has already faced the same problem, without having to go through complex institutional filters.

The second wish concerns continuity, because today many bonds arise around an event or a programme and then fade. I would like the community to offer spaces for exchange that are more stable over time, where relationships are maintained between one project and the next as well, because it is continuity that turns a network into a genuine professional community.

Judith O’Meara is Regional Director of EIT Urban Mobility’s Innovation Hub Central, the initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, a European Union body, dedicated to sustainable urban mobility.

A note on sources. The figures on partners, network and hubs come from the official EIT Urban Mobility pages, accessed on 28 July 2026: Our partners, Our Innovation Hubs, About us. The eligibility criteria and scholarships for Citizens on the Move 2026 are published on the EIT website. The answers in this conversation have been reviewed and approved by EIT Urban Mobility.