Sound Transit identifies Peter Rogoff as its top choice to succeed outgoing CEO Joni Earl

It looks like Sound Tran­sit’s search for a new per­ma­nent CEO has come to an end. Today, the agency announced its search com­mit­tee is rec­om­mend­ing a high-cal­iber, dis­tin­guished can­di­date to suc­ceed out­go­ing exec­u­tive Joni Earl.

His name is Peter M. Rogoff, and he pre­vi­ous­ly served as Fed­er­al Tran­sit Admin­is­tra­tor pri­or to assum­ing the post of Under Sec­re­tary of Trans­porta­tion for Pol­i­cy in the Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Transportation.

“In a com­pet­i­tive field of appli­cants, Peter Rogoff is the com­mit­tee’s clear and unan­i­mous rec­om­men­da­tion to lead our region in meet­ing the grow­ing demand for rail and bus ser­vice,” Sound Tran­sit Board Chair and King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine said in a news release sent to NPI. “Tomor­row, the full Sound Tran­sit Board will dis­cuss his con­sid­er­able qualifications.”

“At its meet­ing tomor­row the full Board may accept the com­mit­tee’s rec­om­men­da­tion or con­tin­ue the search process,” the release says, adding, “Rogoff will be present at the meet­ing. The Sound Tran­sit Board will meet in exec­u­tive ses­sion, ini­tial­ly with Rogoff and then with Board mem­bers only. It will move back into open ses­sion to dis­cuss next steps. The meet­ing is sched­uled for 1:30 PM to 4 PM at Union Sta­tion, 401 S. Jack­son Street in Seattle.”

I have had the plea­sure of being able to inter­act with Peter Rogoff in 2011 (when he vis­it­ed Seat­tle to par­tic­i­pate in ground­break­ing fes­tiv­i­ties for Uni­ver­si­ty Link), and have been very impressed with him. He speaks well, is well respect­ed in his pro­fes­sion, and would bring invalu­able expe­ri­ence and con­nec­tions to the job.

It is a tes­ta­ment to Joni Ear­l’s lead­er­ship and record of get­ting results that Rogoff is inter­est­ed in tak­ing over for her. This would be a huge win for Sound Transit.

We con­grat­u­late King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine and the Sound Tran­sit board on this recruit­ing coup, and urge the board to hire Peter Rogoff as the new chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Sound Tran­sit as soon as it feels com­fort­able doing so.