Providing Leadership in Travel Analysis Field
Dr Joan Walker awarded the 2020 Zephyr Leadership Award
Dr. Walker’s leadership of the Transportation Research Board Travel Forecasting Committee produced an appropriate and much needed reflection of our industry and a renewed drive towards self-improvement, which directly resulted in the creation of the Zephyr Foundation. Dr. Walker is known as a caring and dedicated mentor who has provided useful guidance and a much-appreciated open door to her many students in addition to any industry professional who is lucky enough to introduce themselves to her. As an academic, Dr. Walker has led our field in cross-collaboration with the fields of behavioral economics, environmental justice, and data science to produce relevant and actionable research.
In short, Dr. Walker embodies a can-do spirit that is healthily never satisfied with the status quo, always curious about how to improve, and always willing to take on and lead the challenge required to get there…and she is a nice person to boot.
To dive deeper into “how she does it” , Dana Monzer conducted an in-depth interview with Dr. Walker, which is published as it own post.
The Zephyr Leadership Award
The 2020 Zephyr Leadership Award shall be given to an individual who embraces the Zephyr mission of advancing rigorous transportation and land use decision-making for the public good by advocating for and supporting improved travel analysis and facilitating its implementation.
The 2020 Zephyr Leadership Award selection committee was:
- Pat Mokhtarian, Georgia Tech (chair)
- Joe Castiglione, San Francisco County Transportation Authority
- Chandra Bhat, University of Texas
The Zephyr Foundation is a venue through which leading researchers and practitioners seek to develop and implement travel analysis methods and tools that are demonstrably more valuable, credible, transparent, tractable, reproducible, and usable in order to support public policy decision-making that is inclusive and promotes equitable outcomes, shared prosperity, and sustainability. Contact us if you’re interested in learning more about other Zephyr projects.
