Leadership
TRIP is led by faculty and staff bringing decades of experience across transportation policy, planning, and operations.
Leslie S. Richards
Founder & Executive Director
Leslie S. Richards is the former Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), the fifth-largest state Department of Transportation in the United States, and the former CEO and General Manager of SEPTA, the sixth-largest transit system in the country, serving the greater Delaware Valley.
Trained as a planner, she is known for her commitment to inclusive community engagement and her ability to align complex interests across sectors. The first woman and the first professional planner to lead PennDOT, Richards prioritized the integration of quality-of-life and accessibility considerations into major infrastructure decisions. She led both agencies through significant crises — including a global pandemic and cybersecurity threats — while advancing long-term capital and modernization programs.
Richards is nationally recognized for her leadership in integrating emerging technologies into transportation systems. Her work has emphasized the use of data analytics, artificial intelligence, and smart infrastructure to drive innovation and improve public service.
She has served as Chair of the Pennsylvania Public-Private Partnership (P3) Board, Chair of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, and currently chairs the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies.
Richards received a Master of Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993 and was appointed to the Weitzman School faculty in 2020. She founded the Transportation Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania (TRIP) housed in Penn IUR in 2025.
Megan S. Ryerson
Faculty Advisor
Professor Megan S. Ryerson is the UPS Foundation Chair of Transportation and Professor of City and Regional Planning and Electrical & Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Ryerson's research emphasis is in the area of transportation engineering and planning, with a focus on intercity transportation planning and urban transportation safety. Dr. Ryerson has written extensively in the area of air transportation, including environmental impacts, economic development, and multimodal planning. In 2024 Dr. Ryerson was awarded a $6M NASA University Leadership Initiative award to study, develop, and deploy solutions for aviation system resilience. In the urban transportation safety area, Dr. Ryerson founded the Center for Safe Mobility under which she focuses on the development of novel, human-centered transportation safety metrics as well as the evaluation of safety-focused policies. Dr. Ryerson has published over 65 peer-reviewed articles, won numerous awards for her scholarship and leadership, and counseled major airlines, cities, Universities, airports and Port Authorities, and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Dr. Ryerson served as the first Associate Dean for Research at Penn's Weitzman School of Design. She founded the Research Support Center which assists faculty in pursuing external funding; during her five years as Associate Dean for Research, awarded grants grew by over 300%. Dr. Ryerson is a committed educator dedicated to the advancement of women in transportation. For these efforts, her mentorship and her accomplishments, Dr. Ryerson was named "Woman of the Year" by the Women's Transportation Seminar-Philadelphia Chapter. In 2025, she became the Faculty Advisor for the Transportation Initiative at Penn, led by Penn IUR Faculty Fellow Leslie Richards.
Patrick Sabol
Program Director
Patrick Sabol is the Program Director for the Transportation Initiative at Penn (TRIP). Previously, he served as an Advisor for Program Development and Partnerships at the U.S. Department of Transportation's Advanced Research Projects Agency – Infrastructure (ARPA-I), a new organization focused on accelerating the development and deployment of transformational transportation technologies. Prior to ARPA-I, Patrick led the Infrastructure Investment Prioritization Initiative at the National Academies and co-founded United for Infrastructure, a 500-member coalition focused on revitalizing America's aging transportation systems. Earlier in his career, he served as Senior Researcher at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program and as an associate at a cleantech-focused venture capital firm. Patrick holds an undergraduate degree from Colgate University and a master's from Duke University.