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Meet our Team
Samra Said
Trustee
Samra first learned to cycle in 2010 on a then-called Boris Bike teaching herself by cycling around Hyde Park. Following a knee injury a few years later, she was advised to take up regular cycling as part of her recovery. She bought her first ever bike in 2014 after deciding to take part in a relay team for a 70 mile challenge called Tour De Salah, cycling around five London mosques for each of the prayers.
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Samra is now a keen cyclist who commutes around West London by bike, cycling with a local group most weekends or on solo adventures to discover her local area.
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Alongside her role at Cycle Sisters Samra is dedicated humanitarian with over 15 years in the charity sector. She is currently working for a Manchester-based charity connecting and supporting local people and organisations to tackle homelessness.
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Emma Pajarillaga
Trustee
Emma was one of Cycle Sisters’ first participants and hadn’t ridden a bike since she was a teenager when she joined her first ride back in 2016. It was love at first peddle!
Emma was hooked and quickly went on to buy a bike, train as one of Cycle Sisters' first Ride Leaders and work alongside Sarah to support the group’s development.
Alongside her work with Cycle Sisters, she now works as a Project Coordinator at a local community organisation running an award-winning cycling volunteering project ‘Good Deeds on Bikes’ and was acknowledged in the ‘100 Women in Cycling List’ 2019.
Khadijah Zaidi
Trustee
Khadijah started cycling when she was five, having taught herself in the family living room while the room was being redecorated! She cycled with friends, and then with her husband and young children. She commuted by bike during her university days in the cycling friendly city of Oxford, but stopped when she moved back to London.
When Khadijah moved to Waltham Forest, the council were developing their local cycling infrastructure, which made getting around by bike seem possible again. Khadijah joined local cycling clubs Cycle Sisters, and then Joyriders, and soon got involved in helping out with rides. Within a couple of months she was suddenly cycling everywhere, all the time!
Khadijah trained in 2018 to be a National Standards Cycling Instructor and was acknowledged in the ‘100 Women in Cycling List’ 2019.
Deryn Ellis
Communications & Media Lead
Deryn learned how to ride a bike as a child in Wales, but hadn’t ridden since she was a teen.
Cycling around a busy city seemed daunting to her as a visibly Muslim woman, but after joining her local Cycle Sisters group she fell back in love with cycling and gained the confidence to ride around on London’s roads. Now she’s a Cycle Sisters’ ride leader and cycle instructor and hopes to help other women fall in love with cycling too.
Deryn has been working in social media and content creation for over eight years where she’s led campaigns, and produced hundreds of videos for social media telling positive Muslim stories. She brings her love for content creation and storytelling into her role at Cycle Sisters to inspire more Muslim women to cycle.