Metro Chief Planning Officer Therese McMillan has announced that she has accepted the position of Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the Bay Area. Metro CEO Phil Washington will soon announce an interim CPO and that a national search will commence to permanently fill the position.
Therese previously served as the Deputy Executive Director of the MTC before leaving to join the Federal Transit Administration, where she was the Deputy and Acting Administrator. She became Chief Planning Officer for Metro in March 2016.
Therese has made numerous contributions during her tenure at Metro. Among those: creating and implementing the successful Measure M Guidelines, leading and implementing Metro’s Equity Platform and Framework, leading the effort to create Metro’s Policy Advisory Council and overseeing the planning of numerous Measure M projects — all of which remain on or ahead of schedule.
“Therese’s passion, loyalty, and no nonsense approach to the mission and to project delivery is very noteworthy,” Phil said. “I appreciate Therese’s dedication, creativity and commitment to excellence during her years here at LA Metro, and for building a strong Planning Department that will continue to benefit our region for many years to come.”
Therese’s last day at Metro will be February 22.
As we’ve mentioned before on The Source, Phil has made it a point of emphasis at Metro to attract people to careers in the transportation industry and grow leaders through professional development. He also wants Los Angeles to be a “Transportation Center of Excellence” with a workforce that serves as the farm team for the entire transportation industry.
In that vein, former Metro Deputy CEO Stephanie Wiggins was named CEO of Metrolink in December. Phil subsequently announced that Nadine Lee, the agency’s Deputy Chief Innovation Officer, would serve as the agency’s interim Chief of Staff, a new position. And former Metro Chief Communications Officer Pauletta Tonilas recently left the agency to return to the Denver RTD in an elevated role.
Categories: Transportation News
Metro can’t retain its executive level folks and constantly fires its lower level folks. The middle managers have to constantly re-organize and retrain…not a good environment for productivity and efficiency.
“As we’ve mentioned before on The Source, Phil has made it a point of emphasis at Metro to attract people to careers in the transportation industry and grow leaders through professional development.”
You should ask lower-level staff at Metro if this is how they feel. Because they’ll probably say no.