Shoshana Lew

Shoshana Lew currently serves as the executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, and she is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. Lew’s expertise focuses on infrastructure funding and finance—with a focus on prioritizing limited resource to maximize impacts for taxpayers and communities – and on the intersection between transportation policy, environmental policy, and mitigating climate change.

Lew previously served as the chief operating officer of the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, following eight years of service in the Obama Administration where she concluded her tenure as the chief financial officer and assistant secretary for budget and programs at the US Department of Transportation (USDOT). She was confirmed to that role by the U.S. Senate in December 2015, and oversaw the Department’s $76 billion budget. During her time at USDOT, she also managed departmental efforts to accelerate permitting and delivery of infrastructure projects; development and implementation of fuel economy standards for cars and trucks; and departmental coordination on other key regulatory matters, including asset management for highway and transit programs. She also helped establish the Build America Bureau, which now operates the Department’s credit programs.

Lew previously served in the Obama Administration as a deputy assistant secretary at USDOT, as a senior adviser at the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, as an energy policy adviser at the White House Domestic Policy Council, and at the Office of Management and Budget, where her portfolio focused on implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—with a focus on interagency coordination of transparency and accountability requirements.

Lew began her career as a policy analyst at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, where she developed an enduring affinity for geospatial analysis and the community of practice at Metro. She received her AB in history from Harvard University and her MA in American history from Northwestern University.

EDUCATION

• Harvard University
• Northwestern University