About Randall
Passion - Preparation - Patience - Perseverance - People
You may have seen me photographing events or helping to run a bike riding skills program for youth in the community. These two things have been life-long passions and highlight my dedication to my serving my community.
As a journalist I listened to people's stories, good and bad, to share with the community. I used data to identify trends and found ways to share that information in human terms so people could make informed decisions. I will bring this same approach as your representative.
Julia and I love in Stuarts Draft where her mother grew up and retired to. We love it here and it's home.
My goals are to empower youth and push for livable communities that encourage people to enjoy the outdoors.
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I helped found and run Bike Box of the Blue Ridge, a nonprofit community bike shop that teaches youth to fix bikes and ride safely. We provide quality donated bikes to the community at low or no cost. My favorite time in Bike Box is with teens who work on their own bikes and learning about their lives and goals. Many bikes in the past year have gone to recent refugees and people who do not own cars as transportation.
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Board Member of the Shenandoah Valley Bicycle Coalition. We want stronger, healthier, connected, inclusive, and more joyful communities.
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Organized the 2019 Walk/Bike Summit with Augusta Health to promote the economic and health benefits of walking and biking and now organizing another summit for 2023 on access to the outdoors.
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The bike coalition partnered with the City of Waynesboro to obtain grants to design a five-mile walking and biking trial network in their new Sunset Park.
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Proposed a greenway along the South River in Stuarts Draft to provide a safe area for families to enjoy the outdoors and allow workers to ride or walk to work at the many industrial sites in the area.
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Self-starter who seeks solutions
I have always been a self-starter who loves a challenge and is a solutions-oriented thinker. Throughout my life I've taking risks, saw change as opportunity and willing to question authority or the status quo.
Professional
Journalist, serving over 40 years with community, major metro, and international news outlets. Wolf saw this work at newspapers as a way to serve the community. It also gave him an appreciation for listening and hearing multiple sides of an issue. He respects different points of view and is willing to find a middle ground.
Five words: passion, preparation, patience, perseverance, and people are my "P " principal to success. These words flowed through my mind as I climbed Denali in 1995. Words that summarize how I had a terrific journalism career, words that express how I summited Denali and Kilimanjaro, words that have helped me start a nonprofit, and enjoy a lifetime of seeing the world from the seat of my bike. Passion is always at the core, the other four P's flow in and out as needed in the moment. People is the other core piece of success. If it's not going to empower and help others, why bother.
Project management
Two phrases that steer me when working with groups of people are "creative collaboration" and "empower the expert". Ideas come easily to me, but I know I'm not the smartest person in the room. I love to be part of brainstorming sessions and creating solution space for others to find answers to problems or prepare for the future. I promise to bring this approach to the statehouse and form a bipartisan caucus to seek understanding and create common ground legislation.
Guiding Principles
My view from the summit of Denali in 1993.
Early life and my journey
I grew up on a farm in eastern Pennsylvania where I baled hay, cleaned stalls, and roamed and played in the countryside with friends. Riding bikes became my first passion at age 13. It was a tool for adventure, self-exploration and it came with responsibility.
The other tool that changed my life was a camera in high school; becoming a photographer was also a pathway to professional career as a photojournalist and great way to connect with people. During my career my images were used to help shutdown a landfill that was poisoning a stream, took me to Central America with a Congressional delegation to better understand the civil wars in the region, and to a World Series. Later, as an editor, I assigned the first western reporting team into Libya in 20 years. Amazing as these experiences may have been, what has really been the mainstay in my reporting was the covering people and the issues that affected their lives. I would listen to people about what challenges they were facing, dig into data to find trends and use my love of storytelling to make those life experiences relevant to their neighbors.
As a journalist my career was dedicated to serving the community, listening to their stories, good and bad, to share with the community, keeping an eye on the elected officials, and identify trends and sharing trusted information so people could make informed decisions to move their lives forward. Not unlike what I will do as your representative. A favorite quote his father often used was, "figures don't lie, but liars can figure." Randall has used raw data throughout his career to identify trends and stories to inform readers on the issues and would take the same approach as a supervisor.
Now I promise to bring my passion to represent the community with fiscal sensibilities and social vison.
I love the outdoors, enjoy biking, hiking, and has successfully climbed Denali and Kilimanjaro. His first great adventure was a summer in high school he with five friends rode from their homes outside of Philadelphia to Nova Scotia and Back over three-weeks. That 2,100 mile trip is part of my lifetime biking miles over over 125,000. It's a wonderful way to experience the world. Over the years I've raced bikes and now I'm the event director of The Valley Veterans Ride for Heroes, a charity ride that has raised over $100,000 for people suffer with PTSD.