NYU’s ITE and ITS student chapters hosted the 2nd Annual Women in Transportation Panel Discussion and Networking Night at C2SMART on March 28, featuring several female leaders from agencies and companies in transportation. The panel included prominent speakers from New York City Department of City Planning (NYCDCP), New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA), and Cambridge Systematics who discussed their career paths, gave advice and discussed the day-to-day work of a transportation professional with the student attendees. The event included open time for questions and individual conversations, providing an opportunity for emerging transportation engineers to network with the speakers.

Jingqin Gao, president of NYU ITE/ITS student chapters and Ph.D. student at NYU Tandon, served as the moderator for the event. The panel included the following speakers:

Olga Abinader

Acting Deputy Director • Environmental Assessment and Review Division (EARD) • NYC Department of City Planning
Olga is the Acting Deputy Director of the EARD at the NYC Department of City Planning. She is an environmental planning professional with extensive planning consulting and technical review experience in the public and private sectors who have 10+ years of industry experience in government administration, staff management, regulatory processes, and environmental review. Olga received her Master in Urban Planning from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and her Bachelor of Art from Brown University.

Nadereh Moini
Chief of Transportation • New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA)
Nadereh Moini is the chief of Transportation in NJSEA. Her experience includes the management and design of various ITS projects, data analysis/mining, multimodal safety and crash analysis, vehicle/transit automation and safety and security of bus and rail transit. She has many publications in the area of parking guidance system, port/yard planning, freight movements, microscopic/mesoscopic traffic simulation modeling, and multimodal crash and safety analyses. Nady holds a Ph.D. in Civil & Environment Engineering from Rutgers University. She has Professional Engineering (P.E.) licenses in multi-state and registered Professional Traffic Operations Engineer (PTOE).

Yixin Wang
Senior Associate, Cambridge Systematics
Yixin is a Senior Associate at Cambridge Systematics (CS) with 14 years of experience in both public agency and transportation planning consulting. Prior to joining CS, she served as a Project Manager with NYCDOT, AECOM/URS, and Sam Schwartz Engineering. Ms. Wang has committed herself to innovative approaches for diverse transportation studies, including Integrated Corridor Management, Active Transportation and Demand Management, Connected Vehicles, transportation modeling and simulation, traffic operations, and traffic impact analysis. She is particularly experienced in managing large and complex projects and incorporating current and emerging technology.