Employee Spotlight: Katie Radin makes NYU’s Emerging Leaders in Transportation
Emerging Leaders in Transportation 2022 | Credit: The NYU Rudin Center for Transportation
The word “lacuna” is a reference to an unfilled gap between two related things, and it’s no accident our company was named after the very meta-challenge we’re trying to solve. Next-gen mobility will not be brought about solely by government policy, nor by infrastructure-building, nor by private innovation, nor any other single practice, no matter how advanced or well-studied. No one can know exactly what form future technology and mobility modes will take, but we do know the digital infrastructure that supports them will, almost by definition, be co-created by a thoughtful coalition of disciplines across the public and private sectors.
One of those experts is our own, Katie Radin, who was recently selected to be a member of NYU’s 2022 cohort of Emerging Leaders in Transportation.
An NYU grad who cut her teeth as a transportation planner, Katie was the perfect fit for this fellowship. Sponsored by the university’s Rudin Center and C2SMART Center, it brings together a wide variety of young professionals who spend their working days thinking about how to make mobility better, whether they come from engineering, tech, planning, non-profit, policy, consulting, or any other corner of the transportation universe.
Born for it: KATIE’S origin story
Katie’s passion for great transportation is in her blood; her mother is a transportation planning leader who’s spent the past 35 years improving mobility in the New York metropolitan area (no small feat, considering that every workday the five boroughs add roughly 1.5 million commuters to their already-teeming population). Growing up, Katie learned firsthand a few things that most of us take decades to realize:
Transportation has the potential to transform lives, for good or ill.
As a woman of color, many current transportation systems (built decades ago) were not designed for her or other traditionally marginalized populations—which can and need to change.
Big transportation challenges (such as safety and social equity) require big solutions.
The very best way to build support for those solutions is to enable a diverse team of stakeholders—both private and public sector actors—to come to the table.
Transportation nerds unite
Over the last month, Katie and her 23-person cohort of fellow “transportation nerds” (her words!) gathered in New York City to dive deep into the future of transportation. The fellowship was designed to equip the cohort with the leadership and management skills they'll need to successfully grow into tomorrow’s community of bridge-building transportation leaders (pun intended).
A series of panels featured established industry professionals who mentored the up-and-comers on the parts of the job that aren’t always taught in school, but are no less impactful: transitioning into leadership roles, navigating workplace challenges, and changemaking in a difficult political environment. A field trip to the massive MTA Coney Island Maintenance & Overhaul Shop provided important perspective on the complexity of transportation operations: “Often people in our roles are behind a desk, but we’re actually talking about real infrastructure that’s operating in real time,” Katie told me. “Going out into the field is really important for being able to empathize and understand what it actually takes to run a transportation system.” There was also a sizable focus on networking and enabling the cohort members to form an innovator network that will last well into their careers.
What’s next?
Today, Katie is Lacuna’s Director of Partnerships, and is beloved by her co-workers. Her knowledge of how governments operate, her background in transportation planning consulting, and her instinct for how technology helps or hinders those things give her a one-of-a-kind understanding of how cross-sector partnerships can take shape.
Inspired by the fellowship, Katie’s using her powers to be an even greater changemaker from within. She aims to develop an internal strategy at Lacuna that will supercharge our employees with learnings from all over the transportation ecosystem—infusing our business with a diversity of perspectives that allow us to build more thoughtful products that marry public sector policy outcomes with private sector growth and scale.
When describing her experience with the other Emerging Leaders in Transportation, it was perhaps the last thing Katie said that stuck with me the most, and what made me so proud of our next generation:
