Peterson Earns BSA EIM Award

July 3, 2018

Congratulations to Brian Peterson, System Development Manager of Connected Corridors program in the Institute for Transportation Studies, for receiving the 2017-18 Berkeley Staff Assembly Excellence in Management Award.

“It takes something quite special to lead and be part of a group of people showing this level of excellence, appreciation and community,” says Connected Corridors Program Manager Joe Butler. “Thanks Brian and thanks to everyone who is part of the world class connected corridors organization.”

Since joining Connected Corridors in 2013, Brian has managed the Systems Development team of eight software developers and has become the instrumental technical leader of the project. He not only manages a very complex, multi-year software development project with many competing demands and limited resources, but also builds and maintains an excellent working relationship with his development team both collectively and individually. He demonstrates the qualities of management excellence and is a strong candidate for this award.

Connected Corridor project involves scientists, researchers, software developers, government agencies, government system vendors and private industry. In this large complex traffic management and engineering community, Brian is a crucial mediator who collaborates with all players to push forward the progress of the project, who strives to modernize the traffic management systems with leading-edge technologies, and who advocates to embrace the national standard for data exchange between different systems for the best interest of the community.

With his flexible and open-minded leadership style, Brian has built a team with a diversity of talents including members from different backgrounds and ethnic cultures. In a traditionally male-dominated engineering field and given the poor overall statistics on equity and inclusion in the software development industry, it is a great accomplishment that Brian has found and hired (with the recommendation of the technical team) four women for the recent open technical positions in our group. He has also gone out of his way to include a hearing disabled candidate in one of the recent searches. Brian has also supported nonstandard work arrangements for two team members - one of our female Software Developers works remotely from another continent and brings her expertise to the project despite challenges of time and distance. The team also includes a respected local teacher who makes significant contributions to our project on a part-time basis during the school year and full-time in the summers.