Environmental Perfection: Ronald Kosinski’s Extraordinary Caltrans Career

Lois Cooper faced extraordinary obstacles on her way to becoming the first black female engineer ever hired by Caltrans. Raised in the segregated South in the 1940s, she pursued her passion for math and become an engineer, despite outrageous societal hurdles. In short, she went the distance. WTS-LA honors her dedication, fortitude, and strength each year by recognizing a Southern California transportation luminary who shares those virtues. This year, WTS-LA recognized Caltrans Environmental Planning Deputy District Director Ronald Kosinski with the WTS-LA Lois Cooper Going the Distance Award for his nearly six-decade career in public service.

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Kosinski joined the California Division of Highways (now Caltrans) as a drafting aid in 1966. He soon gravitated toward environmental planning. With the passage of CEQA/NEPA in the early 1970s, Kosinski helped develop Caltrans’s approach to the stringent new environmental regulation. He soon mastered it. As a result, if Southern Californians travel on it today, the odds are extremely good that Kosinski helped ensure the project is environmentally compliant and sound. Today, he manages a multidisciplinary and ethnically diverse staff of more than 100 professionals, as well as the timely delivery of over 150 environmentally sound projects each year. Projects include the I-110 Transitway, I-5 HOV projects, I-405 Sepulveda Pass, Alameda Corridor-East grade separations, and US-101 HOV and Bike Lane projects, to name a few. For Kosinski, though, it’s not just about regulation.

Blending broad understanding of the complex mix of organizations, individuals, and local and federal agencies, along with intricate knowledge of the region, Kosinski navigates the complex regulatory process like a maestro conducting a symphony. His writ covers every discipline as well, from Transportation Systems Management plans to high-speed rail studies to construction of one of the last new freeways (I-105) in California. But there’s another reason that drives Kosinski’s storied success.

Kosinski combines boundless patience, listening, and understanding for all expressed thoughts, opinions, and concerns while maintaining a focus on project objectives. He seamlessly integrates those concerns into the resolution process, ensuring that voices that often go unheard gain respect and inclusion. Promoting a more inclusive work environment, Kosinski also ensures that the public interest and environmental justice are served, particularly for underserved communities that often host transportation projects. And what he does for the environmental process, he also does for his staff.

A longtime advocate for young professionals—particularly women and minorities—Kosinski maintains an open-door policy, personally mentoring all who seek help. Because of his extraordinary disposition and tenure, generations of young planners, scientists, and engineers owe their successful careers—at least in part—to Kosinski’s wisdom and willingness to impart it. But in addition to dispensing wisdom and celebrating staff victories, Kosinski also challenges his charges. When approached by young professionals with exceptional promise, he assigns “reach” projects to raise their game, particularly for women and minorities. Developing their strengths and experience further, this, too, has empowered generations at Caltrans. His department also reflects his credo, as it’s currently led by two women chiefs who have risen through the ranks. But many women owe the opportunity for that rise to Kosinski for believing that gender should never be an obstacle for achievement and advancement.

Ronald Kosinski has crafted a nearly six-decade career of doing exceptionally well by doing very 'real good.' Not only has he protected the environment and improved the quality of life for Southern Californians by stewarding the environmental process on transportation projects, he’s also driven diversity, equity, and inclusion long before that was a catchphrase for nearly 60 years. He has gone the distance and continues to, much like Lois Cooper. For these reasons and many more, WTS-LA proudly named him the 2022 WTS-LA Lois Cooper Going the Distance Award winner.