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PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

Who's Doing What in the Industry

Cris B. Liban
LOS ANGELES, CA—Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has appointed Cris B. Liban, Los Angeles Metro deputy executive officer, environmental compliance and services, as a member of the City of Los Angeles Board of Transportation Commissioners.

Liban co-chairs the APTA Sustainability Commitment Subcommittee and is a member of several APTA working groups.

Cindy McGinnis
LEESBURG, VA—Veolia Transportation has selected Cindy McGinnis as general manager of Loudoun County Transit Operations, located to the west of the greater Washington, DC, metropolitan area.

McGinnis comes to Loudoun County after serving as general manager for Veolia’s Knoxville Area Transit contract. She  began her career in transit nearly 30 years ago and joined Veolia in 2006.

McGinnis has served on the National Transit Institute Board of Directors.

Al Robinson
VAUGHAN, ON—Veolia Transportation has named Al Robinson general manager for York BRT Services. He joined Veolia earlier this year as operations manager at the facility.

Robinson has more than 30 years experience in public transit management, specializing in operations. Before coming to Veolia, he was employed with the Toronto Transit Commission, starting as an operator and working his way up through the ranks to manage two subway lines.

Chris Williges
SAN FRANCISCO—Chris Williges has joined HDR as transportation economics and finance director.

Williges has more than 20 years of experience, most recently as a principal and vice president at System Metrics Group Inc., a California-based consulting firm he helped establish more than a decade ago.

Susan Black
ORLANDO, FL—Susan Black is joining the Central Florida Regional Transportation Authority (LYNX) as its general manager, working with Chief Executive Officer John Lewis Jr.

Black, a licensed attorney since 1996, has more than 25 years of professional experience. Most recently, she was the owner and chief executive officer of 4elements, a professional advisory agency specializing in long-range strategic planning.

Dan C. Guerrero
FORT WORTH, TX—CTC Inc. announced the hiring of Dan C. Guerrero for a newly created position, vice president of signal systems.

Guerrero has spent more than 45 years in various communication and signal positions in the rail industry, most recently with Metrolink commuter rail in Los Angeles. Earlier, he worked for Southern Pacific Transportation Company, a railroad that was acquired by the Union Pacific Railroad.

Greg Oslund
DENVER, CO—Greg Oslund, P.E., has joined CH2M HILL as a global sales manager for the firm’s transportation market,  working out of the Sacramento office. He comes to the firm with 26 years of project/program management, business operations, and business development experience.

Mark Ramsey, Raymond Sandiford, Ruben Manuelyan, Thomas Richardson, Heiner Sander, Arman Farajollahi, Sanja Zlatanic
KANSAS CITY, MO—HNTB has announced the following appointments.

Mark Ramsey is tunnel practice leader in the west and associate vice president, based in Santa Ana, CA. He has more than two decades of experience, serving as chairman of the 2010 North American Tunneling Conference.

Raymond Sandiford, P.E., joined the firm as associate vice president and national geotechnical and foundation practice leader within the tunneling and underground engineering group, based in New York City. Prior to joining HNTB, Sandiford was geotechnical and underground chief engineer for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, directing major geotechnical and underground construction projects for more than three decades.

Ruben Manuelyan, P.E., joined HNTB as technical design manager for underground structures. He has more than 40 years of experience working with immersed tubes and cut-and-cover structures and is based in the New York City office.

Thomas Richardson, P.E., is tunnel construction manager, based in Arlington, VA. He joins HNTB with more than 30 years of experience with geotechnical, tunneling and underground engineering projects, transit systems, and water and sewage systems.

Heiner Sander joined the firm as vice president and tunnel practice leader in the east, based in the Arlington, VA, office. His more than 30 years of experience with tunneling and underground engineering projects includes the English Channel Tunnel between Britain and France.

Arman Farajollahi, P.E., based in New York City, is principal tunnel engineer and serves as senior technical specialist on the firm’s complex tunneling projects. He has more than 22 years experience in analysis and design of tunnels and underground excavations.

Also, HNTB announced that Sanja Zlatanic, P.E., chief tunneling engineer, has been named secretary general of the Associated Research Centers for Urban Underground Space, an international, nongovernmental organization dedicated to partnerships among experts who design, analyze and decide upon the use of cities’ underground spaces. Her term runs through 2018.

Tom Waldron
NEW YORK. NY—Tom Waldron has joined HDR as transit market sector director. He has worked in public transit for more than 35 years, most recently as Americas transit and rail director for AECOM.

Waldron was the first general manager of Virginia Railway Express commuter rail, Alexandria, VA, and worked for New  Jersey Transit Corporation, Conrail, and Futrex Inc. He has served on the APTA Board of Directors and is a current member of the Authorization Task Force, Early Career Program Applicant Selection Task Force, High-Speed & Intercity Passenger Rail Committee, Public-Private Partnerships Committee, and Streetcar Subcommittee.


Juli Word
AUSTIN, TX—The Williamson County Commissioners have named Juli Word to the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board of Directors. She succeeds Norm Chafetz.

Word has more than 21 years of experience in the financial field, serving since 2013 as business services coordinator for the Austin district at the Texas DOT. She joined the agency in 2001 and worked in several accounting and auditing jobs.





Allie Freeman
NORTH LITTLE ROCK, AR—The Central Arkansas Transit Authority (CATA) has named Allie Freeman chairman of the agency’s board of directors. He succeeds Nicole Heaps, who led the board since 2010.

Freeman, a counselor at Metropolitan High School, has been a CATA board member since 2007.

Elizabeth (Liz) Cousins
LOS ANGELES, CA—Nossaman LLP has hired Elizabeth (Liz) Cousins, a native of Perth, Australia, for its international public infrastructure law practice, dealing specifically with public-private partnerships.

Before joining Nossaman, she worked at Clayton Utz Lawyers, one of Australia’s most respected law firms, on some of that nation’s largest and most significant infrastructure projects.






Darril King
DES PLAINES, IL—Motor Coach Industries (MCI) has named Darril King vice president, new coach sales, for the Northeast Region. He was formerly vice president-Setra sales specialist and vice president, regional sales. King joined MCI when the company gained Setra North American distribution rights in 2012.

Earlier, King had a 37-year career at Detroit Diesel, beginning after high school and retiring in 2001. He joined Setra a year later.



Paul Alber, Ricky Liu, Kenji Suzuki
LONG ISLAND CITY, NY—di Domenico + Partners announced the appointments of Paul Alber, Ricky Liu, and Kenji Suzuki as associate principals.

Alber has more than 25 years of experience and has played a key role in managing the feasibility studies, design, and construction administration of many of the firm’s public sector projects.

Liu comes to the firm with more than 15 years of expertise in design, coordination, and management of projects including public transit and high-speed rail facilities and academic buildings.

Suzuki, with more than 17 years of experience, is responsible for developing feasibility studies and conceptual design approaches for transportation, education, and public facilities.

Osama Abdelfatah, Andrew Garton, Robert Coward, Vincent Lombardi
NEW YORK, NY—Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) announces the following appointments:

Osama Abdelfatah has been named a supervising scheduler in the firm’s New York City office. He has served as a project scheduler and project control engineer on major transit projects.

Andrew Garton has been named civil manager for Colorado and Wyoming, based in the Denver office. Previously a supervising engineer, Garton joined PB in 2013. His more than 24 years of engineering experience includes service with Colorado DOT and the city of Colorado Springs.

Robert Coward has been named a senior supervising engineer in the firm’s Lawrenceville, NJ, office. He has more than 40 years of public transit engineering and management experience, most recently as program manager for the Maryland Transit Administration’s Purple Line on behalf of an international consulting engineering organization.

Vincent Lombardi has been named a supervisory resident engineer in PB’s New York City office. He joins the firm after serving as an assistant resident engineer for a national engineering organization and has more than 18 years of infrastructure construction experience.







Patrick Cannon, Robert Swanson, Douglas Lecato
LANSING, MI—The Capital Area Transportation Authority elected Patrick Cannon chair of its board of directors. He has represented Meridian Township on the board since 1991 and previously served as its vice chair and secretary-treasurer.

Cannon was appointed by President Barack Obama earlier this year to the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Access Board and by President Bill Clinton in 1995 to the U.S. Access Board. He also served as Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 2004 and as her disability policy adviser in 2003.  He recently retired as director of the state’s Commission for the Blind.

Robert Swanson, elected vice chair, has represented Lansing on the board since 2008. Following more than 34 years in state and government service, he retired in 2007 as director of the Department of Labor and Economic Growth and a member of Granholm’s cabinet. In 2010, Granholm appointed him to a term on the Michigan Civil Service Commission that expires in 2018.

Douglas Lecato, a Delhi Township representative since 2009, is the new board secretary-treasurer. He has worked for the American Cancer Society’s information technology department for more than 15 years.






Scott Drainville
LUBBOCK, TX—Scott Drainville has joined Citibus as director of maintenance.

Drainville has more than 25 years of fleet management experience, including 18 years as a mechanical foreman with the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority in Providence.






Polly Trottenberg, Neal Zuckerman
NEW YORK, NY—New York City Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg and Neal Zuckerman of the MTA Metro-North Railroad Commuter Council have joined the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board of Directors. Both were nominated by New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and confirmed by the New York State Senate.

They succeed former New York City Budget Director Mark Page and the council’s Jim Blair respectively.

Trottenberg has 22 years of government experience. Before joining New York City DOT earlier this year, she spent more than four years at DOT, most recently as under secretary of transportation for policy.

Zuckerman is a partner and managing director in the New York office of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting firm and advisor on business strategy. He earlier worked for Time Warner and McKinsey & Company.

Jack Besch
PHOENIX, AZ—Jack Besch, assistant general manager for Veolia Transportation, was appointed to a one-year term as treasurer for the Phoenix Sister Cities’ Executive Board.

Phoenix Sister Cities is a non-profit organization dedicated to, among other things, establishing and improving international business ties between Phoenix and the 10 affiliated cities around the globe. Veolia Transportation is a corporate sponsor for Phoenix Sister Cities and supports and sponsors multiple events annually.

Besch joined Veolia Transportation as director of finance and was subsequently promoted to assistant general manager in 2007 after relocating to the Phoenix area.

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