About Speaker

On June 26, 2013, Foxx was sworn in as the 17th U.S. Secretary of Transportation after receiving a 100-0 confirmation vote and entered an agency under distress. Congress had not approved a long-term surface transportation bill in more than a decade. The entire government faced sequestration funding and, within six months, was shut down entirely for 16 days. Rather than scale back the agency’s ambitions, Foxx plowed forward and, as a result, had one of the most consequential runs in the history of the Department. Foxx developed the Obama Administration’s first surface transportation bill and worked on a bipartisan basis to get its congressional incarnation, the FAST Act, passed. He consolidated the Department’s innovative financing programs and accelerated permitting policies into a new Build America Bureau and put a new executive director in place before my departure. He embraced technology by pushing forward new rules governing the commercial use of drones, blueprinted the most comprehensive national policy on autonomous vehicles in the world, and launched the Department’s first, and the Administration’s most successful, Smart City Challenge, engaging more than 70 cities to develop their own strategies to incorporate new technologies into their transportation networks. He placed nearly $30 billion in discretionary federal grants around the country, giving rise to a national pipeline of projects now poised to seek innovative financing, including the NY-NJ Gateway Project, Chicago Union Station, Florida East Coast High Speed Rail, and Texas Central Railway. Along the way, Foxx developed a web of relationships at every level of the public and private spheres. Since leaving the Department, Foxx has started a new joint venture with the Related Companies, Related Infrastructure. The new business is acquiring and investing in transportation-related service, management and development businesses, not physical infrastructure. Additionally, Foxx advises AutoTech Ventures, LLC, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that focuses on surface transportation technology, Hyperloop One, a new transportation technology inspired by Elon Musk, and Tullco Investors, a family venture fund that focuses on artificial intelligence. Prior to joining the U.S. Department of Transportation, Foxx served as Charlotte’s 54th and youngest mayor, running successful campaigns in 2009 and again in 2011. As the then-second largest financial services center in the United States, Foxx inherited a city facing the worst recession in more than 80 years. As the nation’s second largest financial services center, the 25,000-plus job losses created an immediate crisis. Foxx quickly established a blueprint for recovery – reforming the city’s public safety pay plan to bring it into fiscal balance, developing a demand-driven workforce development model that has become a national model, crafting incentives for small businesses and entrepreneurs to grow businesses in the city, and leading the city council to pass the largest bond package in the city’s history.