Jeff Morales is a Managing Principal at InfraStrategies, LLC. He has led some of the country’s largest and most complex transportation agencies and programs, employing innovative approaches to produce unprecedented results. He has successfully navigated challenges at the federal, state, and local levels, as well as in the private sector. Throughout his career, Jeff has promoted and implemented programs to promote workforce diversity, community engagement and sustainability through groundbreaking programs. He is recognized for developing innovative policies and practices that improved productivity and customer service across the agencies he has served and advised.
From 2012-2017, Jeff was CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, building the organization and taking the program from initial planning into construction.As Director of the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) from 2000-2004, Jeff led the nation’s largest state transportation agency as it implemented what was then the most expansive program in its history, with over $10 billion in highway, transit and rail improvements. He moved the agency to a greater emphasis on multi-modal approaches and implemented pioneering policies on context-sensitive solutions and sustainability. At the Chicago Transit Authority, Jeff drove programs to reverse years of declining ridership, renew aging infrastructure and employ new technologies to better serve the agency’s riders.
Jeff started his career in Washington, DC, working in the US Senate and at USDOT. He was a senior staff member of Vice President Al Gore’s National Performance Review, the task force to reinvent government agencies and services and was the Issues Director for the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security in 1996-1997.
In the private sector, Jeff has worked with agencies around the country and internationally to develop and advance major capital programs, assisting them in addressing policy, legislative, operational and management challenges Jeff’s national leadership was underscored by being appointed as a member of the Transportation Transition Team for the incoming Obama Administration in 2008-2009. He has twice been recognized with national Distinguished Service awards by the American Public Transportation Association, first as Director of Caltrans in 2002 and then as chief executive officer of the California High-Speed Rail Authority in 2015.
