Transforming Transportation

Tierra Bills

Tierra Bills is an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and Public Policy at UCLA. Dr. Bills is a thinker, teacher, and researcher committed to advancing equity is transportation systems and policies. She has over 10 years of experience developing and advancing travel demand and equity analysis methods. She holds a B.S in Civil Engineering Technology from Florida A&M University, and M.S and PhD degrees in Transportation Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Evelyn Blumenberg

Evelyn Blumenberg is the Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and a Professor of Urban Planning within the Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research examines the effects of urban structure — the spatial location of residents, employment, and services — on economic outcomes for low-wage workers, and on the role of planning and policy in shaping the spatial structure of cities. Professor Blumenberg’s recent projects include analyses of trends in transit ridership, gender and travel behavior, low-wage workers and the changing commute, and the relationship between automobile ownership and employment outcomes among the poor.

Liz Brisson

Liz Brisson has worked in the public sector in the San Francisco Bay Area for 15 years. In her current role she co-leads the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s transit corridor planning team that directs the early stages of major new bus and rail projects. In this role, Liz has overseen the planning of transit and safety improvements along Geary Boulevard, one of the busiest bus corridors in North America.

Madeline Brozen

Madeline Brozen is the Deputy Director at the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, where she leads strategic planning and center management. She identifies and advances collaborations and connections between academia, government, and community. Her research investigates the potential for transportation equity interventions to improve people’s access to opportunity. Her current work is investigating the role for mobility wallet and car sharing models for low-income households and communities.

tamika l. butler

tamika l. butler — an expert on the built environment, equity, and anti-racism — is founder of tamika l. butler consulting. Previously, she was the Director of Planning, California and the Director of DEI at Toole Design. She’s pursuing a PhD in Urban Planning at the UCLA. tamika received her J.D. from Stanford, and received her B.A. and B.S. at Creighton University in her hometown of Omaha. She lives in Los Angeles with her wife and kids.

Amar Azucena Cid

Amar is the Strategic Growth Council’s Deputy Director of Community Investments and Planning. Amar values and utilizes her lived and learned experiences, rooted in racial justice, the environment, and the community’s ability to thrive, to inform her professional work. She has over 15 years of transportation and community planning and policy experience across public and nonprofit sectors, including positions in affordable housing, federal surveying, youth and health advocacy, legislative analysis, and transportation planning.

Markus Coleman

Markus Coleman has a B.A. in Urban and Metropolitan Studies from Arizona State University and nearly three decades of public administration experience. Since 2019, Markus has held the role of Light Rail Administrator, and is responsible for managing light rail and transit oriented development projects throughout the city. Valley Metro operates 28.2 miles of light rail with 16.3 located within Phoenix. Currently, Phoenix is working with Valley Metro to advance four light rail extensions, adding 18 miles of track in the city of Phoenix.

Cecilia Estolano

Cecilia V. Estolano is a leading expert on contemporary urban planning issues with experience in economic and workforce development, land use, environmental equity, and urban revitalization for cities and communities across the country.
In 2011, she founded Estolano Advisors, a team of technical experts that specializes in managing multi-stakeholder processes to address complex public policy, urban planning, and social equity issues. In 2018. she became the CEO of Better World Group, which has been behind some of the nation’s boldest climate policies and environmental strategies. Cecilia received an A.B. with honors from Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges, an M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA, and a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law.

Eric Goldwyn

Eric Goldywn is a program director at the Marron Institute of Urban Management and a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Transportation and Land-Use program at the NYU Marron Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Urban Planning from Columbia University. He teaches courses on urban planning and urban studies and his writing on cities and transportation technology has been published in academic journals and popular press outlets. His current research focuses on the cost-drivers of transit projects, transit-oriented development, and high-speed rail.

Susan Handy

Susan Handy is a Distinguished Professor of Environmental Science and Policy and Director of the National Center for Sustainable Transportation at the University of California, Davis, where she also chairs the graduate program in Transportation Technology and Policy. Her research focuses on strategies for reducing automobile dependence, including bicycling as a mode of transportation. She is the author of Shifting Gears, forthcoming from MIT Press.

Hasan Ikhrata

Mr. Ikhrata has more than 35 years of public and private sector transportation planning experience. As chief executive officer of SANDAG, he directs day‐to‐day operations of the agency and implements policies set by its Board of Directors. In addition, Mr. Ikhrata is the chief executive officer of the SANDAG Service Bureau, the nonprofit public benefit corporation chartered by SANDAG.

Kate Kigongo

Kate Kigongo is the Manager of Partnerships for Innovative Deployment at Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). Her career has focused on using technology, innovation, and pilot projects to improve transportation, urban design, and sustainability outcomes in California. Kate has worked for the City of West Hollywood, Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative, and the Low Income Investment Fund. She is a double-Bruin, with a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning and BA in Geography and History.

Jody Litvak

An LA native, Jody Litvak serves as LA Metro’s Executive Officer for Community Relations leading a team that works with the 88 cities and other key stakeholders in the County, as also supports Metro’s planning studies, county-wide initiatives, operations and more. She has worked across the agency’s varied functions in the Operations, Planning, Government Relations and other departments. She has been involved in some of the agency’s most visible projects including the Sepulveda Transit Corridor, Purple Line Extension, NextGen Bus Plan, and the successful Measure R and Measure M efforts.

Adonia Lugo

Cultural anthropologist Adonia E. Lugo (she/hers) lives, works, and thinks about mobility justice in traditional and unceded Tongva territory (Los Angeles). Her book, Bicycle/Race: Transportation, Culture, & Resistance, came out in 2018. Adonia is Equity Research Manager at the University of California Institute of Transportation Studies, based at UCLA. In May 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom appointed her to the California Transportation Commission.

Tom Maguire

Tom Maguire is the Director of Streets Division for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, where he leads the city’s efforts to achieve its Vision Zero goal of zero traffic fatalities. He is working to create world class, equitable streets for all San Franciscans by managing the city’s traffic, bicycle and pedestrian safety, on- and off-street parking, and emerging mobility. The Streets Division consists of 1,035 employees who operate, engineer, design, and plan the city’s traffic, parking, pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure and provide transit security and parking enforcement.

Tom joined SFMTA in October 2014 after serving as Assistant Commissioner at the New York City Department of Transportation, where he managed Bus Rapid Transit, Freight Mobility, Peak Rate Parking, congestion pricing, and sustainability, and resiliency programs. He has also worked for the engineering and design firm Arup.

He holds a Master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts from Rutgers.

Michael Manville

Michael Manville is Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Both his research and teaching focus on the relationships between transportation and land use, and on local public finance. Much of his research concerns the tendency of local governments to hide the costs of driving in the property market, through land use restrictions intended to fight traffic congestion. These land use laws only sometimes reduce congestion and can profoundly influence the supply and price of housing.

Charles Marohn

Charles Marohn, known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues, is the founder and president of Strong Towns. He is a civil engineer and a land use planner with decades of experience. Marohn is the author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (Wiley, 2019), And of Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town (Wiley, 2021).

Juan Matute

Juan Matute is the Deputy Director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and an expert on transportation and land use and how technological innovations like driverless cars, electric vehicles and GPS mobile apps like Waze and Google Maps affect urban mobility and transportation accessibility, especially in Los Angeles. Matute also examines sustainable transportation and land use, transit systems, and local government climate planning, specifically how local governments measure and manage greenhouse gas emissions.

Katie Miller

Katie Miller is the President of Left Lane Advisors and a Principal at Fehr & Peers with nearly 30 years of experience in organizational management and executive/leadership coaching. Her education includes a bachelor’s and master’s degree in psychology, an MBA, and professional certifications in coaching, conflict resolution, and DEI. She develops and facilitates training programs to include Leadership NACTO and works with both private and public sectors on trust-building and organizational alignment.

Megan Mullin

Megan Mullin is Professor of Public Policy and holds the Luskin Endowed Chair in Innovation and Sustainability at UCLA. She is Faculty Director of the Luskin Center for Innovation, which partners with civic leaders on research to advance equitable public policy addressing environmental challenges.

Mullin is a political scientist whose research examines how coordination problems, accountability failure, and inequality in environmental risks and benefits shape political response to environmental change. Recent projects focus on the governance and finance of urban water services, public opinion about climate change, and the local politics of climate adaptation. She also has published on federalism, election rules and voter turnout, and local and state institutional design. She is the recipient of five awards from the American Political Science Association, including the Lynton Keith Caldwell Award for her book, Governing the Tap: Special District Governance and the New Local Politics of Water (MIT Press, 2009). In 2020, she was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.

Mullin received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. She served on the faculties at Temple University and Duke University prior to joining UCLA in 2023.

Jon Nouchi

Jon Nouchi has worked in planning efficient and sustainable transportation networks in Hawaiʻi for 25 years. He currently serves as the Deputy Director of the City and County of Honolulu’s Department of Transportation Services and oversees the City’s public transportation network, including TheBus fixed-route, Skyline rail, and Handi-Van paratransit operations. Additionally, he leads all transportation planning, engineering, and technology initiatives on the island of Oʻahu.

Regan Patterson

Dr. Regan F. Patterson is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles and the PI of the Engineering Environmental Justice Lab. She earned her Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley. Her research interests include air quality, sustainable transportation, community engagement, and environmental justice. More specifically, Dr. Patterson examines and models the impact of transportation policies and place-based, community-driven interventions on air pollution exposure disparities and environmental justice.

Kelcie Ralph

Kelcie Ralph is an Associate Professor at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. In her research, Dr. Ralph works to identify and correct common misconceptions about travel behavior and safety to improve transportation planning outcomes.

Karthick Ramakrishnan

Karthick Ramakrishnan is professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside and the founder of AAPI Data and co-founder of California 100, a ambitious futures initiative. He also serves as president of the Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni and on the Boards of The California Endowment and the U.S. Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee (NAC). Ramakrishnan has published many articles and 7 books and dozens of opeds, and has appeared in nearly 3,000 news stories. More information at karthick.com.

Asiyahola Sankara

Asiyahola Sankara is an Equal Justice Works fellow at the ACLU of Southern California. His work focuses on transportation-related police practices that harm Black, Brown, and low-income people. Before the ACLU, Asiyahola served as a campaign manager at the Alliance for Community Transit, where he led work to reimagine public safety on transit by steering funds away from policing and towards infrastructure improvements. He graduated from Pomona College and Howard University School of Law.

Joshua Schank

Joshua Schank is a Partner at InfraStrategies, a transportation and financial advisory firm, where he leads a practice focused on innovation, strategic planning, and technology. He is also a Senior Fellow in the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Research Associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute. Prior to joining InfraStrategies and UCLA, Dr. Schank was the first-ever Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro). Dr. Schank previously served as President and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, a leading national transportation policy think-tank based in Washington, D.C.

James Shahamiri

James leads Los Angeles Metro’s Speed & Reliability program. James oversees improvements such as bus lanes, bus bulbs and boarding islands, signal priority and other operational changes to prioritize transit through congested corridors and intersections.

Donald Shoup

Donald Shoup is Distinguished Research Professor in UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning. His research has focused on how parking policies affect cities, the economy, and the environment. Shoup is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners and an Honorary Professor at the Beijing Transportation Research Center. The American Planning Association gave Shoup its National Excellence Award for a Planning Pioneer, and the American Collegiate Schools of Planning gave him its Distinguished Educator Award.

Brian D. Taylor

Brian D. Taylor, PhD, FAICP is a Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy in the Luskin School of Public Affairs and a Research Fellow in the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA. He teaches courses on transportation, land use, and urban form; public transit and shared mobility; and transportation economics, finance, and policy. Professor Taylor studies travel behavior and transportation equity, finance, history, and politics. His recent research examines falling public transit ridership, public sector responses to new transportation technologies, the socio-economic dimensions of travel behavior, the equity of increased local option sales taxes for transportation, the economic effects of traffic congestion, and the transportation policy and equity implications of the SARS-Cov-2 global pandemic.

Tanisha Taylor

Ms. Taylor was appointed Executive Director of the California Transportation Commission in June 2023. In this capacity, she has a major role in affecting the outcome of all policies and actions adopted by the Commission including the programming and allocation of several billion dollars annually for the construction of highway, passenger rail, transit, and active transportation improvements throughout California. Ms. Taylor initially joined the Commission as the Chief Deputy Director in May 2020. Before joining the Commission, Ms. Taylor previously held positions at the California Association of Councils of Governments and the San Joaquin Council of Governments. In each of these positions, Ms. Taylor was responsible for advocating for the diverse voices of regional transportation agencies statewide.

In 2022, Ms. Taylor was awarded the WTS Sacramento Chapter’s Women of the Year Award for her accomplishments with the Commission. While with the San Joaquin Council of Governments, Ms. Taylor received the 2015 Certificate of Appreciation from the Stockton Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for her work leading the regional transportation planning process. Ms. Taylor is a graduate of Alabama A&M University, one of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Randall Winston

Randall Winston’s career spans law, architecture, and public service. Randall serves as Deputy Mayor of Infrastructure for the City of LA. where he leads Mayor Karen Bass’ infrastructure policy and alignment of public works and transportation investments. Previously, he was an attorney at O’Melveny & Myers, where he represented government and environmental organizations facing complex litigation and state and federal investigations. Prior to his legal practice, Randall was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to serve as Executive Director of the California Strategic Growth Council, a state agency integrating efforts to achieve the state’s climate and sustainable community goals.