The FedEx Transportation Fellowship is one of the pillars of the MAP strategy. The program provides EMBARQ’s staff from different countries the opportunity to learn from FedEx’s expertise in areas like branding and marketing, vehicles and fuels, driver safety, fleet management, and more. EMBARQ staff can then take this knowledge home to apply it in real projects on the ground.
The first class of fellows took part in an intensive training program at FedEx World Headquarters in November 2011. In the next couple of years, the fellows applied their newly gained expertise to develop local and international projects. For example, Magdala Arioli of EMBARQ Brasil and Erin Cooper of EMBARQ contributed to the Exhaust Emissions from Transit Buses working paper in 2012, which was awarded the Fred Burgraf Award for excellence in transportation research. Similarly, Marco Priego of EMBARQ Mexico helped launch the Safety First project in Mexico City, transferring FedEx's approach to driver safety training to the city's bus rapid transit system and training more than 1,000 drivers.
2014 marked the beginning of second cycle of the FedEx Transportation Fellowship program. Fellows met at FedEx global headquarters in March 2014 for a training week with FedEx staff, where they learned about sustainable transport technologies and market strategies. This current class of fellows is working to put these learnings into action. Cristina Albuquerque of EMBARQ Brasil, for instance, has contributed to the QualiÔnibus quality of service project, which adapts FedEx driver safety and operations techniques to public transport systems in Brazilian cities.
The current class of fellows—Cristina Albuquerque (EMBARQ Brasil), María Angélica Pérez (EMBARQ Mexico), Monserrat Buendía (EMBARQ Mexico), Manish Dutta Pandey (EMBARQ India), and Juan Miguel Velásquez (EMBARQ)—will also collaborate on long-term, overarching project integrating multiple geographies and areas of expertise.
