Mia Zmud
Mia Zmud leverages the power of scientific research to guide emerging technology and innovation business strategies and market plans within the transportation industry. Holding C-level, senior advisor, and management roles spanning both the public and private sectors, Mia offers a unique perspective to guide strategic direction, partnership and alliance building, and market strategy particularly within the public sector. She is passionate about driving innovation solutions within the public sector to speed the adoption of emerging technologies, meet customer expectations and deliver results.
Prior to consulting through Blue Door, she established and led the technology and innovation program at the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority in Austin, Texas, where she worked to strategically align emerging technology and forge business partnerships to help the agency deliver on its commitment to innovation. Mia has also worked with two transportation and mobility technology startups to develop and guide their market entry strategy, develop new business initiatives and partnerships, and successfully secure grants from both the US Department of Transportation and Department of Energy with the objective of advancing technology adoption within the public sector. Mia also brings applied expertise and proficiency in research methods, study design and execution, and data analytics within the transportation, public health, public utility and environmental industries.
Mia is active in the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Transportation Research Board providing leadership in transportation innovation and improvements through membership on several standing committees and Transit Cooperative Research Program research panels. For the past three years, she has also served on the International Bridges, Tunnel and Turnpike Association Emerging Technology Committee’s Innovation and Smart Operations Subcommittee which monitors transformation technology for advancing resilient infrastructure and conducts a State of the Practice survey documenting industry progress in adopting innovation practices and emerging technology.
Joined August 2022
Johanna Zmud
Johanna Zmud is an internationally recognized travel behavior researcher, who works with transportation agencies, private sector service providers, and non-profits, to analyze factors influencing acceptance, use, and demand for current, emerging, and future mobility options and transportation technologies. Her work supports evidence-based transportation planning, policymaking, and market entry.
Johanna’s 35 years of experience focused on infusing rigorous research methodology into transportation practice with the goal of improving data for decision-making and investment. She built an internationally prominent transportation survey consultancy (NuStats) and partnered to start a pioneering mobility technology firm (GeoStats) for the capture of passive travel behavior data. She was program manager for transportation and technology at a renowned think tank (RAND), multimodal planning division director at a world-class, university-based institute (Texas A&M), and principal consultant at a highly regarded survey, analytics, and modeling firm (Resource Systems Group).
Her commitment to continuous innovation in research methods, coupled with rigorous science, has been acknowledged by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies with appointments, among many others, as Chair, Travel Survey Methods Committee (1999-2008), Chair, Data and Information Systems Section (2008-2010), Chair, Policy and Organization Group (2010-2013), Founding Chair of the Special Task Force on Data for Decisions and Performance Measures (2012-2016), Founding Chair of the Task Force on Data Privacy Policy (2016-2019), and as a National Associate of the National Research Council (designated 2016).
As a dual resident of Mexico and the United States, with extensive experience working on multiple continents, Johanna brings a unique international perspective to transportation research consulting with an appreciation for diversity in thought and practice. Her commitment to a culture of diversity was recognized by her appointment to the Advisory Board of the Urban Mobility and Equity Center at Morgan State University.
Johanna is a productive researcher and author, excellent public speaker, and expert facilitator. She also has a passion for learning with an undergraduate degree in German and Spanish, a master’s in educational statistics, and a doctorate in communications research (the sociology of technology) from the University of Southern California. She has mentored young professionals in the various organizations for which she has worked, and through TRB, Women in Transportation, and now her association with the University of California at Berkeley.
Joined August 2022
Ginger Goodin
Ginger Goodin’s 35+ year career in the transportation field spans both research and practice. She blends a foundation in applied engineering research with experience in planning and public policy, offering a unique set of skills to policy development, strategic positioning, and market entry. She is passionate about working with organizations to bring innovative and practical solutions to transportation challenges using a research-based approach.
Ginger served more than two decades in research and leadership positions at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. Her specific research expertise covered various forms of road pricing -- managed lanes, high-occupancy toll (HOT)/express lanes and road user fees – as well as automated/connected vehicle policy. Her research sponsors included TxDOT and other state DOTs, FHWA, NCHRP, local transportation agencies, and private companies. For five years she held the position of Director of TTI’s Policy Research Center, leading a $2-3 million annual research program and supporting the Texas State Legislature as an independent policy resource in the areas of highway funding and finance, multimodal freight movement, congestion mitigation, emerging technology policy, and public engagement.
Ginger’s research expertise has been acknowledged by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) with past appointments as two-term chair of the TRB’s Managed Lanes Committee (2007-2013), member of TRB’s Vehicle-Highway Automation Committee (2013-2019), and member of TRB’s Committee on the European-U.S. Transportation Research Symposium on Road and Vehicle Connectivity and Automation (2014-2015). From 2014-2016 she served on the U.S. DOT’s Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Program Advisory Committee, which advises the Secretary of Transportation on the study, development, and implementation of intelligent transportation systems.
As private interests have taken a more significant role in emerging mobility services, Ginger has increasingly been called upon to provide strategic advice. As an independent transportation expert, she conducts commercialization reviews of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant awardees on behalf of the U.S. DOT, supports the Texas A&M New Ventures Competition as a transportation resource, and is currently mentoring a Texas A&M engineering student CAV startup.
She holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering degrees in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University and is a registered professional engineer in Texas. In 2017 she was awarded the Regents Fellow Service Award by the Texas A&M University System, the System’s highest honor for exemplary public service. She is active in her local community as Past President of the Cedar Park Community Development Corporation, Chair of the 2023 Mobility Master Plan Advisory Committee, and member of the 2021 Bond Advisory Task Force.
Joined November 2022
Maren Outwater
Maren Outwater has 35+ years of experience as an architect of forecasting models for emerging modes, pricing and equity studies, travel behavior, and scenario planning. She develops forecasting tools to answer policy questions, produce performance measures, and evaluate innovative transportation investments. Maren’s internationally recognized work bridges the gap between academic research and practice to deliver actionable results to clients.
Maren has conducted research on developing guidance to incorporate autonomous vehicles into travel forecasting models. This research was on how strategic, trip-based and activity-based forecasting models can evaluation autonomous vehicles within current modeling systems. She was also the Principal Investigator for a study to identify travel forecasting methods for specific planning program and planning activities, given specific requirements for performance metrics and constraints on schedule and budget. The outcome was a decision support system to help practitioners select the best methods for their needs.
Maren was the Principal Investigator for federal research on long distance passenger travel, which is supporting the development of the U.S. national modeling system and are simulating persons annually. The long-distance passenger travel modeling builds off activity-based modeling approaches for short-distance travel, but schedules these annually and uses several new methodologies (cross-nested logit, multiple discrete continuous extreme value, negative binomial regression). She also led the implementation of these simulation models, including calibration and validation of national passenger models, and contributed to the development of national origin-destination modal trip tables based on observed data sources.
Maren led the development of national freight forecasting models based on supply chain and tour-based methodologies into a common framework and simulated shipments annually across the U.S. These methods were based on research she led to develop a freight forecasting framework for metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) in the U.S. Maren directed the application of this framework in Chicago, Portland, and Baltimore, which included a procurement market game to capture macroeconomic effects of various freight investments and tour-based models for pickup and delivery services.
She has assisted in the design of commercial vehicle surveys in Chicago and San Diego. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering degree and Master of Urban Planning degree from the University of Michigan and is a registered professional engineer in California, Florida and through the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying. She has been an active member of TRB for 30 years and was profiled in Transportation Research News, published by Transportation Research Board, in Sept-Oct 2014, Number 294. Maren has served on advisory boards for the University of California at Davis and the University of Washington.
Joined January 2023
JANE LAPPIN
Jane Lappin’s long transportation career has focused on the societal and roadway impacts of advanced technologies, and on the development of international research collaborations to address global challenges. She led large ITS project evaluations and international programs at the USDOT Volpe Center, and then led public policy engagement for automated vehicles and robotics for the Toyota Research Institute.
From 2016 through 2020, Ms. Lappin directed public policy engagement for the Toyota Research Institute. Her global portfolio included European and Japanese automated vehicle R&D projects where she focused on vehicle and roadway safety, social equity, and accessibility. Ms. Lappin spoke frequently at conferences on AV systems, testing, and operations.
For ~25 years, starting in 1991, Jane worked for the USDOT at the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center. Her career was defined in 1992 when, as a junior staffer to the Intelligent Vehicle Highway System blue-ribbon advisory group, she helped write the report whose recommendations led to the creation of the ITS Joint Program Office. She subsequently worked across the U.S. Department of Transportation assessing ITS impacts on everything from traffic demand, public acceptance, and safety to transit operations and commercial vehicles.
Jane is best known for her work as co-founder and organizer of the annual Automated Road Transportation Symposium (ARTS), now in its 12th year convening industry, academia, and governments. Jane’s leadership and research expertise have been recognized by Transportation Research Board appointments to Chair the ITS Committee (2010-17) and the Vehicle-Highway Automation Committee (2019-25). She has a National Research Council appointment as co-Chair of the Forum on Preparing for Automated Vehicles and Shared Mobility (2019-24). Jane has also been active for many years with the World Economic Forum programs on automated vehicles and with the UNECE Global Forum for Road Traffic Safety.
Prior to discovering her true calling in transportation, Ms. Lappin worked as a business strategy consultant for Abt Associates, evaluated rural women’s economic development programs in Bangladesh for the Canada International Development Agency, and built and ran a vocational school in New Haven, CT.
Ms. Lappin earned an MBA at the Simmons College Graduate School of Management in 1990, and studied sociology as an undergraduate at Boston University, where she was awarded two departmental Teaching Assistantships.
Joined June 2023
Mark Bradley
Mark Bradley is an internationally recognized expert in designing, estimating, and applying simulation models for assessment of market-based policies and strategies, specializing in ground and air transportation, telecommunications, and demand for high-technology consumer goods and services. He is also an expert in designing and analyzing household travel surveys and Stated Preference surveys. After studying and carrying out research at Dartmouth College’s Resource Policy Center, Mark spent 12 years working in Europe—first as a research at the University of Oxford’s Transport Studies Unit, and then as a co-founder of The Hague Consulting Group (HCG), which became RAND Europe shortly before Mark returned to the US. While working in Europe, Mark became a recognized expert in Stated Preference methods, as well as tour-based modeling and pricing analysis. In 1995, Mark moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and started Mark Bradley Research and Consulting. In 2002, he moved to Santa Barbara. CA, where he remains to this day. Mark joined RSG in 2012 as a Senior Director. Working at RSG until 2023, Mark led and advised on many innovative travel demand model development and survey research projects. Across his 40 year career, Mark has been successful in bridging the gap between academic research and practical applications, and has created modeling, survey, and policy analysis tools that have been used by dozens of agencies in North America and Europe.
Joined January 2024