Connie recently led over 2,000 employees and managed a budget of more than $500 million as the first Latina to run the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. During her tenure with the agency she served in multiple leadership roles where she shaped and championed key initiatives including pandemic response and recovery efforts, Olympics planning, and landmark racial and gender equity initiatives. She also architected critical campaigns that won landmark street safety legislation, shaped the nation’s largest Universal Basic Mobility pilot and established broad-based support for the agency’s pioneering digital mobility work. Connie began her career as a journalist, where she covered everything from car chases to presidential elections: her reporting on the education landscape in LA earned her awards and national recognition. As a political advisor and strategist for several elected leaders, she worked in some of the country’s most underserved neighborhoods and helped secure critical policy initiatives for including a historic minimum wage increase in LA, the nation’s largest local public transportation ballot measure, and a historically important promise zone designation for South Los Angeles. Connie also managed external affairs, partnerships and advocacy efforts as a policy manager for Airbnb, overseeing the 88 cities in Los Angeles County for the global hospitality start-up. Connie’s biggest accomplishment by far is raising three amazing daughters with her husband in Southern California.