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Program Development and Capacity Building

Staff are gathered around a map on a large planning table, engaged in dialog.
The transportation researchers in the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s Program Development and Capacity Building Division work with our sponsors to plan and implement innovative programs. (Adobe Stock/DC Studio)

 

About Us

The U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s Program Development and Capacity Building Division works closely with federal, state, and local agencies to develop and implement data-driven programs that speed the adoption of innovative technologies, policies, and practices.

Some highlights of our work include:

Our team of transportation researchers consists of community planners, analysts, engineers, and economists. We help our sponsors ensure that transportation research leads to results by translating complex regulations, research, and policies into practical and engaging training and guidance resources.

Our Capabilities

Program Development and Evaluation

  • Help transportation agencies develop effective programs by assessing stakeholder needs, evaluating program performance, improving business processes, determining strategic priorities, and creating compelling products and services
  • Provide strategic transportation planning and performance measurement services focused on the following areas:
    • Asset Management
    • Freight Planning, Data, and Operations
    • Innovative Infrastructure Finance
    • Intelligent Transportation Systems
    • Highway Operations
    • Roadway and Transit Safety

Professional Capacity Building to Maximize Impact

  • Work to identify effective policies and practices through qualitative research, such as best practice scans and synthesis studies, and promote their adoption by the public sector workforce through workshops, webinars, courses, and primers
  • Help our sponsors implement successful communications strategies by providing expertise in information technology solutions to develop websites, mobile applications, and online databases.

Meet Our Team

View selected staff biographies.

Aaron Jette

Division Chief

Jette headshot

Aaron Jette is the division chief for the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s Program Development and Capacity Building Division. He has worked at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center for more than a decade, during which he has served as an author, analyst, and project manager for a number of major U.S. DOT strategic planning and policy initiatives, including AV Policy 3.0, the U.S. DOT Research, Development, and Technology Strategic Plan, and the National Freight Strategic Plan. He specializes in strategic management and program evaluation. He served in the Peace Corps in Paraguay and is a graduate of McGill University (Quebec, Canada) and the Harvard Kennedy School (Cambridge, MA).

Areas of Expertise:

  • Strategic Planning
  • Program Evaluation

Noah Augustine

Community Planner

Noah headshot

Noah Augustine is a community planner with experience working in the areas of asset management, performance management, and program evaluation. Currently, he works most closely with FTA and the North Carolina Department of Transportation, providing both program development and program evaluation expertise related to transit asset management and innovation/knowledge management.

Prior to coming to the U.S. DOT Volpe Center, Augustine worked in accounting and, briefly, in a local government housing planning department. He holds a BA in gender studies and government from Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY) and a master’s in urban planning and community development from the University of Massachusetts Boston (Boston, MA). Augustine was awarded the Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship to fund his master’s thesis on transportation equity and decision making, and he was a participant in the Federal Pathways Internship program.

Laura Black, PhD

Civil Engineer

Laura Black, PhD is a civil engineer in the Center for Policy, Planning, and the Environment at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center. In this role, she designs and executes market research, policy analysis, program evaluation, business process improvement, and professional capacity building initiatives. Black’s projects span across several topics including safety data and analysis, data governance, traffic and freight operations, performance management, and safety management systems.

She works with federal and state agencies including FHWA’s Office of Safety and Office of Operations, U.S. DOT’s Office of the Secretary, PHMSA, NHTSA, and Federal Land Management Agencies in the U.S. Department of the Interior. She holds a doctor of philosophy in civil engineering, a higher education teaching certificate, a master of arts in urban affairs and public policy, a master of civil engineering in infrastructure systems, and a bachelor of civil engineering from the University of Delaware (Newark, DE).

Areas of Expertise:

  • Facilitation
  • Freight Planning, Data, and Operations
  • Highway Safety
  • Instructional Design
  • Safety Management Systems
  • Strategic Planning

Jared Fijalkowski

Community Planner

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Jared Fijalkowski is a community planner in the Program Development and Capacity Building Division at the Volpe Center. He has over a decade of experience in transportation planning, program development, professional capacity building, and instructional design. Fijalkowski has worked with FHWA, FTA, and FRA to apply these skills to a variety of transportation topics, including bicycle and pedestrian planning, statewide and metropolitan planning, tribal transportation planning, and transit asset management. 

Fijalkowski is a graduate of Clark University (Worcester, MA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA), and he was one of the founding leaders of the Boston Chapter of Young Professionals in Transportation.

Areas of Expertise:

  • Facilitation
  • Instructional Design
  • Program Development
  • Transportation Planning

Alisa Fine

Community Planner

Fine headshot

Alisa Fine is a community planner in the Program Development and Capacity Building Division at the U.S DOT Volpe Center in Cambridge, MA. In this role, she supports U.S. DOT agencies, such as FHWA, on a range of efforts that include program development/delivery, policy analysis, strategic planning, and professional capacity building, with a strong focus on freight transportation. Fine’s areas of expertise include freight transportation planning and freight operations analysis.

Highlights of her recent work include drafting federally required reports to Congress on port performance and national freight system conditions and performance, developing a strategic program framework for FHWA’s Office of Freight Management and Transportation, and researching and documenting the freight state-of-practice through noteworthy practices, primers, white papers, fact sheets, and other materials. Fine also serves as a lead project manager on the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s portfolio supporting FHWA’s Office of Freight Management and Operations.

She received an MA in geography from the University of Colorado-Boulder (Boulder, CO).

Stephanie Galeota

Program Analyst

Stephanie Galeota is a Program Analyst in the Program Development and Capacity Building Division at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center. In this role, she supports FHWA by providing wide-ranging assistance for program development, professional capacity building, instructional design, and grants management in areas of transportation safety, planning, operations, and asset management.  Prior to joining the U.S. DOT Volpe Center, Galeota worked for 15+ years in the fields of international development and education. She holds both a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Master of Arts in Higher Education Administration from Boston College (Newton, MA).  

Michael Green

Economist

Michael Green is an economist in the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s Program Development and Capacity Building Division. He has 5 years of experience working at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center, during which he has served as program manager, team lead, author, and analyst for a number of U.S. DOT projects including FHWA’s GIS in Transportation capacity building program, National Park Service transportation financial planning efforts, FTA’s safety management plan efforts, and the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s Survey and Evaluation Community of Practice.

Prior to coming to the U.S. DOT Volpe Center, Green worked as a portfolio administrator for U.S. Bank followed by an alternative resource research project in Ecuador. He received a BA in economics and international relations from Boston University (Boston, MA), and an MA in applied economics from the University of Massachusetts Boston (Boston, MA).

Areas of Expertise:

  • Program Evaluation
  • Benefit-cost Analysis
  • Survey Design
  • Data Visualization
  • Grant Program Evaluation

Sarah Husain

Program Analyst

Husain headshotSarah Husain is a program analyst in the Program Development and Capacity Building Division at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center. Since joining the U.S. DOT Volpe Center in 2022, she has supported several federal agencies, most notably FTA on mobility innovation, transit automation, knowledge sharing, and transit asset management projects. 

Prior to joining the U.S. DOT Volpe Center, Husain worked in fixed-route transit operations and on transit data/information and fare payment projects at local and metropolitan governments. She has a BA in History from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Baltimore, MD) and a MA in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the University of Delaware (Newark, DE). Husain holds a planner certification from the American Institute of Certified Planners. 

Sean Laffey, PE

Engineer

Sean Laffey is a licensed engineer who focuses on freeway operations and management research. His expertise includes multimodal transportation system design, microsimulation modeling, and evaluation; ITS, TSMO, and connected vehicle planning, design, deployment, and evaluation; pedestrian infrastructure design; and intersection design. Since joining the U.S. DOT Volpe Center in 2022, Laffey has worked extensively with the FHWA’s Offices of Operations and Safety, the Office of Freight Management, and the National Park Service. He has provided a wide range of support including data analysis and visualization, capacity building projects, grant reviews, manual reviews, and report creation management.  

Laffey holds BS and MS degrees in civil engineering from the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA). In 2016, he received the Eisenhower Research Fellowship and, through the fellowship, conducted connected vehicle research at the Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center. As a guest researcher at FHWA, Laffey worked with a variety of public and private partners to study the effectiveness of pedestrians sending advance in-vehicle warning messages to drivers at mid-block crosswalks.   

Prior to working at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center, he worked as a consultant at AECOM, Kittelson and Associates, and CDM Smith where he worked on a variety of transportation engineering, planning, and community outreach projects throughout the U.S.  

Emily Lawless

Technology Policy Analyst

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Emily Lawless works at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center as a technology policy analyst in the Program Development and Capacity Building Division. She joined the U.S. DOT Volpe Center in 2015 and since then has supported a range of federal agencies, including FHWA, FTA, and U.S. Department of Transportation Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology, to promote strategies and activities that advance the work of their agencies and support efforts that encourage information sharing and foster dialogue.

Lawless’s experience includes development and coordination of professional capacity building initiatives and programs, evaluation of transportation programs, support of educational and training activities, and research and analysis of transportation advancements abroad for various modal agencies within U.S. DOT.


Lawless holds a BA in communications from the University of New Hampshire (Durham, NH). Prior to joining the U.S. DOT Volpe Center, she worked for many years in the fields of teaching and academic administration in Madrid, Spain, and Boston, MA.

Areas of Expertise:

  • Capacity Building
  • Intelligent Transportation Systems
  • Transit Asset Management

Derek Lo

Policy Analyst

Lo headshotDerek Lo is a policy analyst in the Program Development and Capacity Building Division at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center. He has been at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center since 2021, and in that time, he has worked with a variety of federal agencies, including FHWA, FTA, FRA, and the Bureau of Land Management. Key portfolios Lo has supported are FTA’s Transit Asset Management Program and FHWA’s Office of Freight Management and Operations. With these agencies, he has worked on program evaluation, capacity building, strategic planning, database development, notable practices, discussion forums, and grant reviews & management. In addition, Lo has conducted research in the areas of urban interstate highway displacement and supply chain analysis. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science and history from The George Washington University (Washington, D.C.) and is a proud alumnus of the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s Pathways Program.   

DJ Mason

Technology Policy Analyst

Mason headshotDJ Mason is a technology policy analyst in the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s Program Development and Capacity Building Division. He has worked at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center since 2016 and has made significant contributions to a variety of national strategic initiatives including the National Freight Strategic Plan, National Park Service National Long-Range Transportation Plan, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s The Importance of Highways to U.S. Agriculture report. Mason serves as a freight portfolio manager supporting FHWA’s Freight Office to develop and deliver a wide range of technical assistance and strategic freight planning efforts to state and national partners. He also serves as a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Urban Freight Committee. Mason is a two-time graduate of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI), holding degrees in political science and regional planning.

Areas of Expertise:

  • Freight Planning, Data, and Operations
  • Strategic Planning
  • Transportation Planning

Emily Navarrete

Community Planner

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Emily Navarrete is a community planner for the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s Program Development and Capacity Building Division. She has led and supported major U.S. DOT freight initiatives, such as the National Freight Strategic Plan and National Coalition on Truck Parking, and has served as a project manager and analyst for freight planning, data, and operations as well as stakeholder engagement and coordination. Navarrete received a master’s in urban planning and policy from the University of Illinois Chicago (Chicago, IL) and a bachelor’s in architecture from Florida International University (Miami, FL). 

Areas of expertise:

  • Freight planning, data, and operations
  • Stakeholder engagement and coordination

Kaitlin Schluter

General Engineer

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Kaitlin Schluter is a general engineer for the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s Program Development and Capacity Building Division with experience working in the areas of transportation safety, capacity building, performance management, and program evaluation. Currently, Schluter she works most closely with FTA and the National Park Service, providing program development and program evaluation expertise related to transportation safety and transit asset management.

Prior to joining the U.S. DOT Volpe Center, Schluter worked as a monitoring and evaluation specialist in international development, focused on program design, program evaluation, and evaluative learning. She served in the Peace Corps in Namibia. She holds a BA in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, WI), where she supported research with the university’s Transportation Operations and Safety Laboratory, and she holds an MA in education from George Washington University (Washington, D.C).

Jennifer Shelby, PhD

Economist

Shelby headshotJennifer Shelby, PhD, is an economist in the Program Development and Capability Building Division. She engages her skills and experience related to teaching and learning, content delivery, evaluation, research design, and technical writing in her work at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center. Shelby’s work focuses on public lands transportation, rural planning, innovative finance, learning and development for transportation planners, research, and capacity building. This supports portfolios with FHWA, primarily with the Transportation Planning and Capacity Building division, FTA, National Parks Service (NPS), and the Office of the Secretary of Transportation. Her work has resulted in reports, case studies, and white papers on a range of transportation planning topics as well as learning events, peer exchanges, and web content.  

Prior to joining the U.S. DOT Volpe Center, Shelby taught at the University of Colorado Boulder and conducted research on various topics related to urban planning, land use, and policy. Her areas of expertise include urban planning theory, rural planning, environmental psychology, site design, creative economy, and community engaged research and pedagogy.  

Shelby has a PhD in Environmental Studies and MS in Business Analytics from the University of Colorado Boulder (Boulder, CO), as well as a Masters of Community and Regional Planning and BA in Economics from Boise State University (Boise, ID). 

Kelsey Wingo

Community Planner

Wingo headshotKelsey Wingo is a community planner in the Program Development and Capacity Building Division at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center in Cambridge, MA. In this role, she supports U.S. DOT agencies, FHWA’s Transportation Planning Capacity Building, on a range of efforts that include facilitating resource exchange, community building, peer learning and development, and professional capacity building. Highlights of Wingo’s recent work include drafting toolkits on emerging transportation technologies for international audiences, tracking equity measures across transportation modes, and drafting case studies featuring innovative state, regional, and local planning strategies. She received an MS in Community and Regional Planning and an MPA in Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX) and a BA in Journalism from the University of Missouri (Columbia, MO).  

Areas of Expertise:  

  • Critical Infrastructure 
  • Risk Management 
  • Strategic Planning 

Stephen Zitzow-Childs

Operations Research Analyst

Zitzow-Childs headshotStephen Zitzow-Childs is a civil engineer who focuses on freeway operations and management research. Since joining the U.S. DOT Volpe Center in 2016, he has worked extensively with FHWA’s Offices of Operations and Safety, providing wide-ranging support for data analysis and visualization, program development, and professional capacity building projects. Zitzow-Childs’ main portfolio of work focuses on strategic planning and research in the area of transportation systems management and operations and professional capacity building, communication, and knowledge management within the FHWA Operations Discipline. 

He has also supported data and geospatial analysis for rail and transit projects, safety studies for the National Park Service, and several other projects with FHWA and FTA. 

Zitzow-Childs holds BS and MS degrees in civil engineering from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (Minneapolis, MN). 

He received a 2018 U.S. DOT Volpe Center Director’s Recognition Award for his contributions to the FHWA Work Zone Driver Model Team. Zitzow-Childs helped to develop and assess a car-following model used to better estimate travel behavior in work zone scenarios, which will help state DOTs and MPOs to more accurately estimate queuing and congestion in work zones. In 2017, he received the Cale Anger Award from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo-Engineering for his master thesis concerning the design of high-occupancy toll lane facilities.