Saving Our Region's Public Transportation Systems & Building for Tomorrow

Saving Our Region’s Public Transportation Systems & Building for Tomorrow is an online panel of the 30th RPA Assembly.

Ali serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Development Officer at AECOM, where he plays a key leadership role in in managing all new business strategy in New York State. This involves developing marketing opportunities for all AECOM business lines in New York, managing several public and private sector clients, and fostering brand awareness.

Prior to joining AECOM, Chaudhry served as the Deputy Secretary for Transportation to New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo. In this role, he oversaw policy, operations, and funding at all New York State transportation entities, including the Department of Transportation (DOT), MTA, Thruway Authority, Port Authority, Department of Motor Vehicles, in addition to regional transit agencies. He has also served as Assistant Counsel to Governor Cuomo and for the New York State Senate.

Between his government experience and work at AECOM, Chaudhry has played an essential role in some of the biggest infrastructure projects and programs delivered in New York State over the past 50 years, including the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, the Second Avenue Subway and redevelopment of LaGuardia Airport. He currently serves as the project executive for American Airlines’ Terminal 8 redevelopment, Design-Build lead for Off-Rikers jails, and as a strategic advisor for the construction of the LaGuardia AirTrain and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

Chaudhry hails from Lahore, Pakistan and currently lives in Long Island City. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Ohio Wesleyan University and a law degree from Albany Law School.

Rick Cotton became the Executive Director of The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on August 14, 2017. Prior to joining the Port Authority, since January 2015, Mr. Cotton served as Governor Cuomo’s Special Counsellor for Interagency Initiatives, serving as the point person within the Governor’s office for most of the Governor’s major downstate infrastructure priorities including LaGuardia and JFK Airports, the Moynihan Train Hall and Penn-Farley Complex, the new Tappan Zee Bridge, the expansion of the Javits Center, and the MTA’s Second Avenue Subway project. Mr. Cotton joined the administration following 25 years at NBC Universal, where he held a number of positions beginning in 1989, including 20 years as EVP and General Counsel and four years in London as President and Managing Director of CNBC Europe. He also served as Executive Secretary to the Department at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare under Secretary Joseph A. Califano, Jr. and Special Assistant for Renewable Energy to Deputy Secretary of Energy John Sawhill at the U.S. Department of Energy. Mr. Cotton received an A.B. from Harvard College and a J.D. from Yale Law School, and served as a law clerk to Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Thomas Donahue Jacobs US Transit and Rail Practice Leader, has more than 20 years of experience as a transportation management consultant with a focus on transportation policy, performance management, asset management, finance and technology implementation. Tom manages multiple contracts across vehicles, systems, and operations with and for transit and transportation agencies in a variety of roles where he develops an in-depth understanding of the organization, its people and priorities. His specialties include federal, state and transit requirements in regards to policy, procurement, funding, and operations.

Sarah Meyer is the Chief Customer Officer for New York City Transit. She is charged with modernizing and enhancing the customer experience for New York’s subway and bus riders. From trip-planning, to purchasing fares, to on-board experiences, she is responsible for their journey end-to-end. She is currently focused on redesigning the bus network, getting the community approvals needed to improve our subway infrastructure, and developing better digital tools to help customers get from A to B, quickly and easily.

Prior to her work at Transit, Sarah was a communications and business transformation consultant. Most recently, she was an SVP at Edelman in the Corporate and Public Affairs Practice. She has more than 15 years of experience in strategic communications, marketing and advertising, issues management, crisis communications, community building and fundraising, social media strategy, content creation and amplification. Sarah led the execution of the award winning #IDO campaign for Lambda Legal and the #BurnBright campaign for the WNBA’s New York Liberty, both of which leveraged content partnerships and celebrity engagement. Sarah also directed the digital war-room for the Virgin Galactic spaceship crash and created rapid response content for product recalls.

While a Vice President at Blue State Digital, she led social strategy for Ford Motor Company, successfully transitioning the team to create an always-on content production studio that increased followers and engagement rates. She also developed and executed fundraising and membership campaigns for the Museum of Modern Art, UNICEF, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the United Way and No Kid Hungry.

She won two Webby awards for her work on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s campaign ​‘Remember Me’, a website built to identify and locate displaced children from documentary photographs. She won a third Webby for a website she developed for Lady Gaga’s Born this Way Foundation.

Born and raised in New York, Sarah received a B.A. from Wellesley College in Art History.

Beth serves as the director of Transportation for America, which is Smart Growth America’s transportation arm. In this position she leads transportation policy development and technical assistance with departments of transportation. She was previously at the U.S. Department of Transportation, where she served as the Acting Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy beginning in 2009. At USDOT, Beth managed the TIGER Discretionary Grant program, the secretary’s livability initiative, the development of the Obama administration’s surface transportation authorization proposal, and the implementation of MAP-21. Before joining USDOT, Beth worked for Sen. Tom Carper (DE) as an advisor for transportation, trade and labor policy, as the policy director for Smart Growth America and as legislative director for environmental policy at the Southern Governors’ Association. She began her career in Washington, DC in the House of Representatives working as a legislative assistant for Rep. Ron Klink (PA-04) and as legislative director for Rep. Brian Baird (WA-03).

John Porcari is responsible for integrating WSP’s technical expertise in planning, engineering, program/construction management and operations with the strategic thinking needed by owners, developers and operators to successfully deliver infrastructure programs and projects.

He served as interim executive director of the Gateway Development Corporation (GDC) from July 2016 until early 2019. The GDC oversees the Gateway Program, a comprehensive rail investment program to improve current services, add resiliency and create new capacity for a critical section of the Northeast Corridor – the most heavily used passenger rail line in the country. Mr. Porcari remains an advisor to the GDC.

Prior to joining WSP in December 2013, Mr. Porcari was deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Transportation. He served as chief operating officer for an executive branch department with a $77 billion annual budget, composed of 10 operating administrations and 55,000 employees worldwide. He twice served as secretary of the Maryland Department of Transportation, from 2007 to 2009 and from 1999 to 2003, managing a state agency responsible for integrated highway, transit, aviation, port, bridge and tunnel authority and motor vehicle administration components, with 9,300 employees and a $3.2 billion annual budget. From 2003 to 2007 he was vice president for administrative affairs at the University of Maryland, serving as chief administrative officer and chief financial officer for the flagship campus of the University System of Maryland.

Mr. Porcari has a master’s degree in public administration from the Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the State University of New York at Albany and a B.A. in political science from the University of Dayton. He has served on the board of directors of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the American Public Transportation Association, the World Trade Center Institute and the National Aquarium in Baltimore.