Chief Executive Officer
Credit: Metro
About
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (Metro) Board of Directors voted to hire Stephanie Wiggins as Metro’s CEO on April 8, 2021. A lifelong trailblazer and champion of equity and inclusion, Ms. Wiggins will be the first woman – and first African American woman – to lead Metro in the agency’s history, which dates to 1993. The appointment as CEO is a homecoming for Ms. Wiggins who served as Deputy CEO of Metro until December 2018.
Before rejoining Metro as CEO in June 2021, Ms. Wiggins served for two and a half years as CEO of Metrolink. Metrolink is the nation’s third largest passenger rail system covering 538 route-miles throughout Southern California. At Metrolink, Ms. Wiggins managed an annual budget of $793 million at an agency that employs 282 fulltime employees. She was the first woman and first African American to lead the 28-year-old organization.
At Metrolink, Ms. Wiggins adeptly navigated the disruption caused by COVID-19 with a customer-first approach while upholding its foundational value of safety. Ms. Wiggins led the development of a Recovery Plan to reimagine the delivery of Metrolink service in a post-COVID-19 environment, driven by insights gathered from surveys with customers and employees. She demonstrated her commitment to developing new ideas to better serve the core ridership of essential workers who use Metrolink to connect to their jobs on the frontlines of the pandemic with safe, and reliable transportation.
With a deep and genuine commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion, Ms. Wiggins strives to provide all people living in Southern California equal access to mobility to get to work, school, healthcare and leisure activities. Achieving that goal depends on leading an organization that is as diverse and inclusive as the region it serves.
As Deputy CEO of Metro, she assisted the CEO in providing leadership and formulating and achieving strategic public transportation objectives, including the passage of Measure M, a half-cent sales tax approved by 71 percent of voters in LA County. She also established the Women and Girls Governing Council. During her tenure at Metro, Ms. Wiggins also served as the Executive Director of Vendor/Contract Management, where she implemented procurement streamlining initiatives and greatly expanded Metro’s utilization of small and historically underutilized businesses. Prior to that role, Ms. Wiggins was the Executive Officer and Project Director of the Congestion Reduction/ExpressLanes Program where she launched the first high occupancy toll lanes in LA County, the I-10 and I-110 Express Lanes, which improved travel times and travel reliability on two of the County’s most congested freeway corridors.
Prior to Metro, Ms. Wiggins served as Regional Programs Director for the Riverside County Transportation Commission (RCTC) and oversaw transit, commuter rail, rideshare, goods movement and rail capital projects.
Ms. Wiggins began her career in transportation when she accepted a temporary assignment at the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority and fell in love with the mission of the agency. The six-month temporary assignment turned into more than four years at SBCTA.
She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration from Whittier College in 1992 and in 2007 earned a Master of Business Administration from the USC Marshall School of Business.
Ms. Wiggins is a self-proclaimed “military brat” whose father made his career in the Air Force. She credits her childhood experience of moving from military base to base and country to country for teaching her the importance of diversity.
Ms. Wiggins is the founding president of the Inland Empire Chapter of Women’s Transportation Seminar. She is the recipient of many awards including the 2020 National League of Railway Women’s Woman of the Year award. She is a Board Member of the Los Angeles Chapter of Friends of the Children, the Southern California Chapter of the American Heart Association, and a member of the Whittier College Board of Trustees.