November 2021 - 37

Pooja Shah, a fellow with the Clean Energy
Leadership Institute, brings a unique combination
of technical, leadership and entrepreneurial
skills to the industry.
As a woman of color with an engineering background,
Shah has an intersectional approach to
addressing climate change. As part of Climate
Action KC's Equity Committee, she worked
alongside several elected officials and community
leaders to push for more inclusive and
equitable policies and solutions to improve
climate resilience in Kansas City. As part of this
team, she helped shape equitable electrification
and transportation policies to help drive
healthier communities, affordable mobility and
easier public transit access for marginalized
communities. This plan is now being used as
a model by several local counties to shape
a more equitable clean energy economy.
Shah frequently shares her knowledge and
experiences. She is a mentor with the Global
Women's Network for Energy Transition
program for Latin American Countries and
Women in Energy Storage where she mentors
women on applications of batteries, their
role in electrification of transportation, fleet
mobility and vehicle to grid integration. She
is also on the Central Exchange WiSTEMM
Leadership Team that annually celebrates
the accomplishments of women in Kansas
A changing climate poses
critical challenges to how we
engineer and design our new
systems, as well as adapt our
existing infrastructure. "
City setting trends and breaking barriers in
STEMM fields. She is the advocacy squad lead
for UnitedWE's first ever young professionals'
group who engage young professionals to
educate women about civic engagement and
empower them to step into decision making
roles where they can drive policy changes.
Additionally, Shah has been recognized
by Women of Renewable Industries and
Sustainable Energy (WRISE) with a WRISE DEI
2019 Award for her leadership and efforts to
promote diversity, equity and inclusion in environmental
sustainability. She also received the
Women Powering Smart Energy Award 2021
in the rising star category for being an inspiration
to young women driving electrification.
Fast Fact: Shah was recognized as a
NextGen Leader by the Kansas City Business
Journal through its program that celebrates
emerging leaders who are making a difference.
MassTransitmag.com/21246408
Pooja Shah
Clean Energy
Fellow
Leadership Institute
Austin Jude Stanion is an urban planner
and data strategist and currently works
at TransLoc. Six months after beginning at
TransLoc, he was promoted from senior solutions
engineer to his current role, manager of
solutions engineering. Here, he helps transit
providers evolve to meet the challenges and
the opportunities of economic recovery,
while working to improve mobility for all.
During his tenure, Stanion has spearheaded
the launch of TransLoc's planning and design
services, providing transit agencies with data
analysis and mobility simulations for various
route and service scenarios. This tool was
put to use by the Napa Valley Transportation
Authority (NVTA) to address ridership impacts
from the pandemic. Stanion took the reins,
developing heat maps indicating where riders
began and ended trips using historic transit
and demographic data. This led to them
helping NVTA determine how to redeploy
fixed-route buses alongside microtransit to
better meet the area's transportation needs.
Stanion continued his professional development
outside of TransLoc. He received a
Masters of Urban and Regional Planning at
UCLA, where his research focused on the
environmental impact of freeway congestion
on 710. He took the lessons learned and
applied them to real-world experiences. For
I constantly remind myself that
data only tells part of the story,
and all data comes with its own
set of limitations and biases. "
example, he worked for the city and county of
Los Angeles, where he advocated for environmental
justice in mobility planning, contributed
to the L.A. County Climate Action Plan
and mapped L.A.'s underrepresented populations
in preparation for the 2020 Census.
With that said, one of Stanion's crowning
achievements came as a research fellow
with L.A. Metro where he helped broker
the city's first microtransit project. While
at L.A. Metro, Stanion wrote and published
the congestion pricing whitepaper,
" Managing the Automobile: Empowering
Angelenos to Shift Their Travel Behavior. "
Stanion is a member of APTA,
ACT, IPMI and CalACT.
Fast Fact: While working for the city and
county of Los Angeles, Stanion advocated for
environmental justice in mobility planning and
mapped underrepresented populations for
Census 2020.
MassTransitmag.com/21246391
NOVEMBER 2021 | MassTransitmag.com | Mass Transit | 37
Austin Jude
Stanion, AICP
Manager of Solutions
Engineering
TransLoc
http://www.MassTransitmag.com/21246408 http://www.MassTransitmag.com/21246391 http://www.MassTransitmag.com
November 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of November 2021
