AASHTO Journal - Jain Nominated to be New Jersey DOT Commissioner

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill (D) has nominated Priya Jain (above) to be the next commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Transportation.

[Above photo by Mace Consult]

Jain – a civil engineer and business professional – most recently served as president of Americas for Mace Consult, an international construction consulting firm, where she led strategic growth and operational excellence across the region.

Prior to joining Mace, Jain served as executive vice president and chief growth officer at Atlas Technical Consultants, driving enterprise-wide growth initiatives.

Before that, she spearheaded the expansion of the British multinational construction, design, engineering and business services company Atkins in North America as senior vice president for sales and strategy. Jain also previously held senior leadership roles at consulting firm CH2M consulting, managing and delivering major client programs.

Early in her career, she worked as an engineer on the original Access to the Region’s Core or ARC Tunnel project – a commuter-rail project to increase passenger service capacity on New Jersey Transit between Secaucus Junction in New Jersey and Manhattan in New York City that was cancelled in 2010.

Gov. Sherrill. Photo by the New Jersey Governor’s Office.

“I am thrilled to announce Priya Jain as my nominee for commissioner,” the governor said in a statement. “A proud Morris County resident, she has advanced large-scale transportation and major projects across New Jersey and the globe and understands how to build new infrastructure from the ground up.”

“I am honored to be nominated as the next commissioner,” Jain noted. “New Jerseyans rely on our transit systems each and every day and as Commissioner, I plan to work closely with the governor in order to reduce commute times, make our roads and bridges safer, and improve access to transit all across the state. We will cut through red tape and permitting delays in order to finish what we started and build the Gateway Tunnel, expand transit access in South Jersey, and repair aging roads across the state.”

Jain holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a master’s degree in physics from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science in Pilani, India, and a master’s degree in environmental engineering from the University at Buffalo.