For the past several years, Modaxo Senior Vice President and host of Transit Unplugged Paul Comfort, has hosted one of the most exciting, innovative, and engaging executive gatherings in public transit in North America—the ThinkTransit Executive Summit. This day-and-a-half conference within a conference running on April 3rd and 4th during ThinkTransit is exclusively for C-suite transit executives. It was created so transit leaders can discuss the hottest topics and trends facing transit openly and frankly in a closed-door meeting—free of distractions and amongst their peers.
As Paul Comfort talks with leaders across the U.S. and Canada, he gets a unique cross-agency perspective. He picks up on trends and challenges before many because he connects with so many of you on a daily basis. This insight lets Paul curate sessions that get to the heart of the challenges leaders are facing today—and tomorrow.
With the wide range of speakers from inside and outside of transit agencies, the Executive Summit is a catalyst for new ideas and solutions. A place where everyone can learn something to take back to their agency to improve service for their customers.
Listen to Randi and Tris chat with Paul about the Executive Summit on Destination: ThinkTransit.
Let’s dive into what the Executive Summit is all about.
As Paul talks about in the latest episode of Destination: ThinkTransit, being a senior executive is exciting, challenging, and sometimes very lonely. You’re the person at the top who is supposed to have all the answers. The person who will stand and lead the agency forward.
But what if you don’t know the answers?
Where do you turn to get some insight? Who can be a sounding board for ideas, but also reflect back some answers?
Your peers. Your fellow transit leaders.
This is the heart of the Executive Summit. The summit isn’t just exclusive to executives, it operates under Chatham House Rules. What’s said in the room, stays in the room. From Wikipedia:
Under the Chatham House Rule, anyone who comes to a meeting is free to use information from the discussion, but is not allowed to reveal who made any particular comment. It is designed to increase openness of discussion.
The summit was created so everyone can share openly, learn from each other, and do it with a feeling of safety and privacy. At last year’s Executive Summit Paul recounts how many of the speakers delivered raw, emotional, and powerful presentations. Presentations that touched everyone in the room. Presentations that would not have been possible without this first and most important degree of safety.
This year Paul has put together an amazing agenda of speakers, panels, and even a debate for the Executive Summit. You can read about all of the sessions on the Executive Summit Agenda page, but we’ll highlight a few key sessions here:
But that’s not all.
Paul has pulled together a panel of new transit CEOs to talk about their first years on the job. This panel features:
To close out the Executive Summit, Paul has gathered some of the transit industry's true visionaries to provide a vision of the future of public transit in North America with:
We’re also tackling the zero fare vs fare enforcement dilemma head on with a debate featuring Noah Berger CEO of Merrimack Valley Transit (zero fare) and Rich Sampson Executive Director of SWTA (fare enforcement) moderated by Kate Mattice, Executive Director Northern Virginia Transportation Commission (NVTC) (listen to her recent Transit Unplugged episode where she talks about the topic).
And possibly the jewel in the crown, is a session on leadership from best-selling author and senior consultant at FranklinCovey, Shawn Moon. Shawn recently appeared on Transit Unplugged and gave us a taste of his leadership advice. His session is sure to be one that everyone in the room will get something out of.
Attending the Executive Summit is only $149 and includes access to all of the sessions at ThinkTransit. The Executive Summit starts Monday April 3rd with sessions all day, followed by a private dinner. Tuesday April 4th will be a half-day session culminating with the Transit Unplugged Live CEO roundtable.
With the speakers and attendees already confirmed, this year’s Executive Summit will again be a Who’s Who of transit leadership and a place where great ideas for the future of transit will be born.
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