AASHTO Journal - AASHTO Appoints Vélez-Vega Aviation Council Chair

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials has named Eileen Vélez-Vega (above), secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Transportation and Public Works, to a two-year term as chair of its Council on Aviation Transportation.

[Above photo by Puerto Rico DOT & PW]

The Council on Aviation recommends policies related to aviation legislation and regulation, and also coordinates those efforts as needed wit the National Association of State Aviation Officials.

Raised in Sabana Grande, Puerto Rico, Vélez-Vega received a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and a Masters in Engineering from Mississippi State University.

She interned at the Walt Disney World college program in Florida and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

[Editor’s note: The Atlantic magazine also profiled Vélez-Vega in 2016 about her civil engineering career.]

Vélez-Vega also worked for four years with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a civil engineer and then for the North Carolina-based Kimley-Horn design and planning firm from 2006 until she returned to Puerto Rico in 2014, when she became Kimley-Horn’s vice president of business development on the island.

Vélez-Vega – who specializes in the design and construction for commercial and general aviation airports, as well as multidisciplinary projects and business development – became the first female secretary of the Puerto Rico’s Department of Transportation and Public Works in 2020.