H eadlines
PennDOT Secretary Speaks at Women’s Event
L O CAL
SELAH MAYA ZIGHELBOIM | JE STAFF
WHEN YOU’RE STUCK
in traffic or when the train
is running late, it might be
easy to curse the infamous
Pennsylvania Department of
Transportation (PennDOT).

Secretary of Transportation
Leslie S. Richards hears your pain.

As the head of PennDOT,
she oversees 40,000 miles of
state roadways, 126 public-use
airports, three ports and 64
operating railroads, as well as
more than 11,000 employees.

On Jan. 24 at Fox Rothschild
LLP, Richards will speak at 6
p.m. at a professional women’s
networking event put on by
Women’s Philanthropy, an affin-
ity group of the Jewish Federation
of Greater Philadelphia.

“Transportation is really
tied to the quality of life, com-
munities, where people live
and how they get to work, how
they go about their daily life,”
said Richards, who belongs to
Beth Tikvah B’nai Jeshurun.

“It helps get freight and goods
movement as well to those
communities and helps build
the economic vitality here in
Pennsylvania and everywhere.”
Richards said she plans to
speak about PennDOT and
women’s leadership.

Richards has put together
the Transportation Investment
Plan and the PennDOT Road
MaP to improve the state’s road-
ways, but considers PennDOT
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Connects, a program she began
to get stakeholders involved
in their communities’ infra-
structure projects, her greatest
accomplishment. “Because of this program,
we’re seeing improvements in
pedestrian safety because we
better understand how people
walk around these assets or use
these assets,” said Richards,
who has lived in Montgomery
Country for 25 years. “We’re
seeing improvements in trails
and getting them built and
partnering with communities
if they don’t have the funding.”
Richards earned a bachelor’s
degree in economics and urban
studies from Brown University
and a master’s degree in regional
planning from the University of
Pennsylvania. She started her career
with the Environmental Protection
Agency and also did some work
for the City Planning Commission
and the Central Philadelphia
Development Corporation.

She became a stay-at-home
mom for eight years and
became active in her town-
ship as well as the Delaware
Valley Regional Planning
Commission. She rejoined the workforce at
an environmental engineering
firm, where she became inter-
ested in transportation projects.

“I fell in love with it as we
started to work with so many
different stakeholder groups,
and also it’s really gratifying
to start something and see it
built,” Richards said.

She was then asked to run
for the Whitemarsh Township
Board of Supervisors. Her initial
response was a firm no, but her
husband — whom she met on
a Jewish Federation mission to
Israel — convinced her to give
it a shot.

She won the election. After
four years, she went on to serve
as vice chairwoman of the
Montgomery County Board of
Commissioners and, in 2015,
Gov. Tom Wolf appointed her
secretary of transportation.

Because of her professional
Leslie S. Richards is the first
woman to serve as Pennsylvania’s
secretary of transportation.

Photo provided
background as a planner, she
wanted to improve planning
and engineering while in office.

She is the first woman to
serve as secretary of transpor-
tation, and advancing diver-
sity and inclusion within
PennDOT and at partner orga-
nizations has been one of her
goals. One way she has done
that is by adopting gender-neu-
tral language in the agency.

She has declined to work on
Yom Kippur, even when she
was in Melbourne, Australia for
the ITS (Intelligent Transport
Systems) World Congress in
2016. She skipped that day of
the conference and went to a
local synagogue instead.

When, in 2018, the confer-
ence was held in Copenhagen
and once again fell on Yom
Kippur, she left for services. But
this time, a group of other Jewish
attendees accompanied her.

“I jokingly have earned the
nickname ‘The Sandy Koufax
of Transportation’ because I
won’t work on certain days, but
really it’s just Rosh Hashanah
and Yom Kippur,” she said.

Women’s Philanthropy
Director Marni Davis met
Richards at a Jewish Business
Network event and reached out
to her about a speaking gig.

“She’s an amazing role model
and someone that we feel other
professional Jewish women in
our community would like to
hear from,” Davis said. “We’re
thrilled to have her.” l
szighelboim@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



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