June 6, 2018
Profile on Shirley DeLibero
Former CEO of the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (METRO) and New Jersey Transit Corporation (NJ Transit)
Interview location: her condo in Milton, Massachusetts and Ashmont Grill in Dorchester, Massachusetts
In one word, she describes herself as “Tenacious.”
Shirley DeLibero, in front of her old trolleys in Milton, Massachusetts, in September 2017. (Photo credit Laura Lee Huttenbach.)
In public transportation circles, Shirley DeLibero is known as the Queen of Transit. Over the course of...
February 12, 2018
Profile on Rhonda Briggins, MARTA
Senior Director of External Affairs
Interview location: MARTA Headquarters in Atlanta, GA and SIP The Experience
In one word, she describes herself as “blessed.”
Rhonda Briggins at the MARTA headquarters in Atlanta, GA. (Photo credit Allison Colburn).
Before Rhonda Briggins goes home to Birmingham, Alabama for Christmas, she has to call her parents and see how many children will be at their house. In the last four decades, Rhonda’s mother and father have been foster parents to hundreds of childre...
January 16, 2018
Profile on Andy Byford, TTC
Chief Executive Officer at the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC)*
Interview location: TTC Headquarters in Toronto, Ontario and on the subway.
In two words, he describes himself as “British Patriot.”
Andy Byford, in his office at the TTC headquarters in Toronto, with a framed Plymouth Argyle, his beloved football team’s, jersey. (Photo credit Laura Lee Huttenbach, August 2017.)
Andy Byford is standing at his computer when he lets me into his office, four minutes after our scheduled meeting. “I’m sorry...
May 9, 2017
Profile on Christine Viña, AIA
Project Manager for Urban Design, VIA Metropolitan Transit
Interview location: Ácenar Restaurant in San Antonio (and several other stops)
How we got there: On foot and by bus
In one word, she describes herself as “unpredictable”
Christine Viña wearing her pins and medals, by the famous San Antonio Riverwalk in 2016. (Photo credit Laura Lee Huttenbach.)
San Antonio is in the middle of Fiesta, a two-week party, and the colorful city has mariachi music spilling out of every corner. Tomorrow is the Bat...
April 26, 2017
Profile on Jeremy Johnson-Miller
Mobility Coordinator at the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT)
Interview location: At the Iowa DOT and a café in downtown Ames, Iowa
How we got there: by CyRide Bus
He describes himself with the word, “Passionate.”
Jeremy Johnson-Miller in 2017. (Photo credit Laura Lee Huttenbach.)
Though Jeremy Johnson-Miller was born in the 1980s, he doesn’t like the title millennial. “I feel like millennials get a bad rap,” he says, noting that they’re often accused of being “entitled, or not hard working....
April 11, 2017
Profile on Joel Volinski
Director at the National Center for Transportation Research
Interview location: Center for Urban Transportation Research, University of South Florida in Tampa
How we got there: On foot from the parking lot where I parked my rental car
In one word, he describes himself as “Fair.”
Joel Volinski in 2017. (Photo credit Laura Lee Huttenbach.)
When Joel Volinski accepted a job as the interim director of Florida’s Broward County Transit Agency in 1983, he had never ridden on a public transit bus. “Here I was, th...
March 28, 2017
Profile on Susan Shaheen
Co-Director, Transportation Sustainability Research Center; Adjunct Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley; Director, Innovative Mobility Research
Interview location: TSRC office in Berkeley, California and the Royal Exchange Restaurant in San Francisco, California.
In one word, she describes herself as “innovative.”
Susan Shaheen on the UC-Berkeley campus in 2017. (Photo credit Laura Lee Huttenbach.)
Susan Shaheen climbs into the backseat of a white P...
March 14, 2017
In late-January, the New York Transit Museum hosted its Fifth Annual Transit Trivia Competition in downtown Brooklyn. People Who Move People writer Laura Lee Huttenbach was there with a microphone to document the evening.
In this eleven-minute podcast, she speaks to participants and organizers alike, earning a new respect for all the people who love and work in public transit.
People Who Move People is a web series profiling individuals who have made an impact in public transit. The series has been initiated and funde...
February 21, 2017
Profile on John Lewis
U.S. Representative for Georgia’s Fifth District,
“Big Six” Leader of Civil Rights
Interview location: Congressman Lewis’s office in Atlanta, Georgia, and aboard the Streetcar
He describes himself with the word “Patience.”
Congressman John Lewis in his office. Atlanta, GA - 2016 (Photo credit Laura Lee Huttenbach.)
As the Greyhound pulled into the Rock Hill, South Carolina, bus station, the Ku Klux Klan readied their fists and pipes. It was May 9, 1961. The bus was carrying the “Freedom Riders,” a group of...
January 24, 2017
Profile on Nuria Fernandez
General Manager/CEO for Valley Transit Authority (VTA) in San Jose, CA)
Interview location: VTA Headquarters in San Jose, CA
In one word, she describes herself as “fearless.”
When Nuria Fernandez was growing up in Panama, water was a big part of her world. In addition to living by the water, she spent a couple summers interning at one of the canal locks of the Panama Canal, a feat of engineering that her great-grandfather had helped to construct. “But for some reason I’ve always been in surface [tra...
Laura Lee Huttenbach, an Atlanta native and a graduate of the University of Virginia, is a curious traveler with a terrible sense of direction, which she considered to be a handicap until an old man named Tony Gulliver pointed out: “It’s probably your best quality, because you’re always finding new places.” Laura Lee’s first book is “The Boy is Gone: Conversations with a Mau Mau General” (Ohio University Press, 2015), the life story of a Kenyan independence leader whom she met while backpacking in Africa. You can learn more about her projects at www.LLHuttenbach.com.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
People Who Move People is a series profiling individuals who have made an impact in public transit. The series has been initiated and funded by RouteMatch Software, an Atlanta-based company who is passionate about transit and proud to record these stories.
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