Our Industry-Leading Experts
His Excellency Eng. Abdullah Al-Mogbel, Chairman
His Excellency has served as Saudi Arabia’s minister of transport and is a former mayor of Riyadh, giving him the opportunity to work on some of Saudi Arabia’s largest infrastructure projects. Dedicated to promoting tunneling and underground space training throughout the world, His Excellency conceived of a foundation to help developing countries train engineers. This idea was welcomed by the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA), and thanks to the generous donations of its founders, the ITACET Foundation for Education and Training in Tunnelling and Underground Space Use was created in 2009, with H.E. Eng. Abdullah Al-Mogbel as its president.
A graduate of the Saudi University of Petroleum and Minerals, H.E. Eng. Abdullah Al-Mogbel has actively participated in a multitude of professional organizations, including chairing the International Road Federation (IRF), where he’s been considerably involved in the IRF’s Fellowship Program, which provides grants to young engineers to study at top universities around the world.
Amy Ford
As the director of the Mobility on Demand Alliance (MODA) for ITS America, Amy Ford leads the creation, strategic direction, and activities of MODA. MODA promotes an innovative, traveler-focused approach to transportation that leverages emerging mobility services, integrated transit networks and operations, real-time data, connected travelers, and cooperative intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Amy previously served as the chief of advanced mobility for the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), directed the RoadX Program, and served as the chair for the State of Colorado’s Autonomous Mobility Task Force.
With more than 20 years of experience working in transportation, education, and city public affairs, Amy owned her own strategic communications firm before working for CDOT and has led various economic and community development efforts in the city and county of Denver. She received her Master of Public Administration from the University of Colorado.
Tim McManus
Tim McManus is a global expert on the development and delivery of major capital projects and programs. He’s currently an associate professor at Columbia University’s School of Engineering. From 2015 to 2019, Tim was a vice president and client development advisor at McKinsey & Company. Before McKinsey, Tim held key roles for AECOM, the New England Patriots Football management team, Ernst & Young, PMA Consultants, and Exxon’s International Project Management Group.
Tim has delivered lectures at the Harvard Business School, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, and Columbia University. He’s currently an instructor in the Executive Education Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Tim was an advisory board member for Smart City Works, and BoSTEM for the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley, and currently serves on the board of trustees for Cristo Rey Boston.
Sam Schwartz
Sam Schwartz, a former New York City traffic commissioner, is the CEO of Sam Schwartz Engineering, a firm specializing in transportation planning and engineering. Sam’s transportation career began in the late 1960s as a New York City cabbie, and he first joined the Traffic Department, as a junior engineer, in 1971. Introducing the word “gridlock” to the lexicon, Sam also writes the “Gridlock Sam” traffic column in the New York Daily News.
Sam’s recent books, Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and The Fall of Cars (2015) and No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road of the Future (2018), provide a blueprint for cities faced with changes in modes, automation, demographic shifts, and traveler preferences. Sam earned a Bachelor of Science in physics at Brooklyn College and a Master of Science in civil engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.