Anthony Foxx

Anthony Foxx is the 17th United States Secretary of Transportation and the former mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. As Secretary of Transportation, he led an agency with more than 55,000 employees and a budget of $70 billion. Sec. Foxx was responsible for overseeing American air, maritime, and surface transportation and ensuring that America maintained the safest, most efficient transportation system in the world. Confirmed by a rare 100-0 Senate vote, Sec. Foxx’s career success is indicative of his demonstrated ability to push forward in an era of deep partisan divide. Crafting an ambitious agenda to modernize America, he pressed Congress to pass the nation’s first long-term surface transportation bill in more than a decade. Sec. Foxx energized DOT’s embrace of innovation to help solve these problems by launching the Smart City Challenge, a national competition to implement bold, data-driven ideas that make transportation safer, easier, and more reliable in that city. He also worked to accelerate the Department’s efforts to incorporate vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technology into new vehicles. Called “the Great Connector” as a result of his efforts to update, streamline, optimize, and digitize the nation’s transportation system, Sec. Foxx discusses the American transportation system, innovation, and coalition building.