2024 Award Winners
Past President Award - Adele Hall, SRF
Member of the Year Award - Kristin Thompson, Metro Transit
Woman of the Year Award - Joy Miciano, Zan Associates
Woman to Watch Award - Jackie Nowak, SRF
Employer of the Year Award - Metro Transit
Rosa Parks Diversity Leadership Award - Brigitte Bjorklund, Zan Associates
Innovative Transportation Solutions Award - East 7th Street/Arcade Improvement Project
Honorable Ray LaHood Award - Rob Hume, Kimley-Horn
Past President Award: Adele Hall, SRF
Adele Hall, transit planner and enthusiast, leads the transit planning practice at SRF Consulting Group. She has worked on transit projects in the Twin Cities and increasingly across the country since 2007 and has been a member of WTS almost as long. Adele has served on the WTS-MN board in several roles and was the chapter president in 2023. Adele holds a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from the Humphrey School and a Bachelors in Economics from Carleton College.
Member of the Year Award - Kristin Thompson, Metro Transit
Kristin Thompson has been the Director of Asset Management at Metro Transit since 2022. She leads a growing team that supports the agency’s cross-functional asset management program. She began her career with Metro Transit in 2006 and previously held several roles within Service Development.
Kristin is a graduate of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and Macalester College. She serves as the executive sponsor of the Metropolitan Council’s Pride Employee Resource Group. She is a member of the WTS Minnesota advisory board and is active in the American Public Transportation Association and the Institute of Asset Management.
Woman of the Year Award - Joy Miciano, Zan Associates
Joy Miciano is the President and CEO for Zan Associates where she brings together her passion for building community and connections with people, and continually strives to improve and implement best practices in engaging communities.
Over the last 30 years, Joy has personally and professionally worked with and among a variety of communities to learn, engage and share experiences, from being a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, a parent educator for Way To Grow in Minneapolis, a public health professional supporting youth and teen parents, and working in environmental health, to a transportation communication and engagement consultant.
Since 2007, when Joy started down a new career path and was hired to be the public information coordinator for construction contractor team for the 35W Crosstown reconstruction project in Richfield and Minneapolis, Joy has brought her communication and engagement expertise to some of the largest transportation and transit planning, design and construction projects in the Twin Cities and Minnesota including Gold Line BRT (opening in spring 2025!), Green Line in Minneapolis, Rush Line/Purple Line, Riverview Corridor, Northern Lights Express, Northstar Commuter Rail, Midtown Corridor/B Line; 494 Corridor; 35W reconstruction between downtown Minneapolis and 42nd Street, construction of 35W North E-ZPass between Lino Lakes and Minneapolis and Highway 10 Anoka. In addition, Joy worked and continues to work on local innovative transportation projects such as the Maryland Avenue 4- to 3-Lane conversion and East 7th Street and Arcade Street redesign both in East Side Saint Paul, and the Lyndale Avenue South 4- to 3-Lane pilot project in Minneapolis.
In 2011, Joy became the first employee of Charleen Zimmer’s one-person consultant company, Zan Associates, where together, over ten years, Joy helped to grow the company by setting high expectations for engagement and communications on the projects she worked on and supporting the ever-growing staff. In 2021, Joy became the President and CEO, and today Zan Associates is 30-people strong, and, in addition to its office Minneapolis, has an office in Portland, Oregon. Joy continues to share her passion and expertise for engagement strategies that are equity-focused, authentic and creative with her staff and the projects they work on, so all voices can be heard.
Joy has served on the WTS MN Advisory Board, is a member of the University of MN’s Center for Transportation Studies Executive Committee, and has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California-Santa Barbara and a Master’s of Public Health from the University of MN-Twin Cities. Joy has lived in Uptown, Minneapolis for over 27 years, and is supported by her husband of 21 years, Steve; her daughter Maya, a sophomore at San Diego State University studying urban studies; her son, Oliver, a soon-to-be graduate of Minneapolis Washburn High School and an incoming freshman this fall at Tufts University focused on engineering; and a grumpy but lovable, 14- year-old Shih Tzu named Murphy.
Woman to Watch Award - Jackie Nowak, SRF
Jackie leads the Transit Data Sciences practice at SRF Consulting Group. In this role she strategizes and oversees data analysis work on a variety of projects from transit capital investments to service design to ongoing performance monitoring. Since beginning her role with SRF in 2019, Jackie has worked to enhance data-driven decision making on projects to align with the values of individual transit agencies. Her goal is to build data competency in the industry as data becomes more accessible. To this end she excels at telling stories with data. The growth of the Transit Data Sciences practice at SRF has allowed Jackie to build and support a team of women in an area of practice often dominated by men. She has found fulfillment in this aspect of her role and looks forward to continuing to empower women in the industry as her career progresses.
Employer of the Year Award - Metro Transit
Metro Transit, Minnesota’s largest transit agency, is strongly committed to being a welcoming and inclusive employer and service provider.
To attract, support, and promote women, the agency offers apprentice, leadership development, and mentorship programs, supports Employee Resource Groups, including Advancing Women in Transit, and ensures women voices are prominent in conversations about workplace culture. Women also led recent efforts to expand and improve lactation rooms, earning the agency a Breastfeeding Friendly Workplace designation from the Minnesota Department of Health.
In 2023, the agency welcomed its first female general manager; three women sit on Metro Transit’s executive team and six of the agency’s 19 director-level positions are filled by women. A quarter of the more than 400 operators hired in 2023 identified as female. In addition, the Metro Transit Police Department has joined the 30x30 Initiative, setting a goal to have women represent 30% of sworn officers by 2030.
As part of an effort to be more welcoming to all riders, Metro Transit recently revised and prominently posted its Code of Conduct, which prohibits harassment, and has introduced a new team of non-sworn personnel who ride transit to help riders feel more comfortable. Building on these efforts, the agency will soon introduce an anti-harassment campaign.
Rosa Parks Diversity Leadership Award - Brigitte Bjorklund, Zan Associates
Brigitte is the Director of Education and Equity at Zan Associates. Her experiences as a Black professional and her 20 years of work as a teacher, trainer and equity and inclusion specialist provides her with a unique perspective to guide and advise on diversity, equity and inclusion. As Zan’s equity director, Brigitte created the Zan Equity Scorecard Tool, which helps to guide staff in assuring that project tasks are diverse, equitable and inclusive. In all of her professional roles, Brigitte has focused on partnering with diverse communities, making space for deep listening around specific challenges and strengths, and working together to reach shared goals. Brigitte is a certified as a REACH (Respecting Ethnic and Cultural Heritage) trainer, National Urban Alliance Coach, Cognitive Coach, Courage Conversations
Trainer, and holders an equity certification from U of MN (ECHO). She has a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from Hamline University and a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Minnesota.
Innovative Transportation Solutions Award - East 7th Street/Arcade Improvement Project
The East 7th St/Arcade Avenue Improvement Project, located in Saint Paul, committed to an extensive, multi-lingual, public engagement process and used public feedback as a catalyst to transform the project to more closely meets the community’s multi-modal and economic needs. A federal RAISE grant award in 2021 elevated a simple mill and overlay project to one that alters the geometric design of the roadway to ensure safety for all travelers, with an innovative aesthetic design process. The project team remained flexible and swiftly navigated an atypical project development process to make sure local government partners, elected officials, community-based organizations, and the public were supportive. An extensive visual quality advisory committee process and community design workshop largely determined the aesthetic and landscape elements of the project, resulting in an innovative community supported design, Placemaking and Urban Design Framework Guide, and maintenance solutions. Women from MnDOT, Zan Associates, WSB (to name just a few important partners!) have been the forefront of project leadership and support. The project is slated for construction in 2025.
Honorable Ray LaHood Award - Rob Hume, Kimley-Horn
Rob has been in transportation engineering for 35 years. The last ten of those years have been centered locally on light rail transit. Rob recalls that in college, the ratio of men to women in his civil engineering program was 25 to 1. Thankfully, over the years the ranks of women in transportation have grown substantially, and with that growth has come greater balance. Balance in perspective, balance in decision making, and most importantly balance in leadership. Throughout Rob’s career, he has focused on investing his time and attention where the talent and energy is. By taking this approach, Rob has had the privilege of working with some very talented women in transportation.