When I returned from my visit to TransLink, I walked into my publisher’s office and told her I quit. I was moving to Vancouver. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I was sure that was the place to do it.

It’s hard not to fall in love with Vancouver once you’ve been there — the temperate weather, the genuinely nice people and one hell of a transit system.

It was clear that TransLink CEO, Pat Jacobsen had fallen in love with the area as well when I asked her to tell me a bit about her history in the industry. She smiled at me and said, “What is this interview about — me or the agency.”

Starting Out

Jacobsen is cut and dry when it comes to her industry history, “I was in marketing, and then I went into the Ontario government. I stayed there for 20 years. And for four years I was the deputy administrator of transportation.”

Gaining her love for the transit industry in this appointed position, Jacobsen would move to financial services for 10 years before being pulled back to transportation five years ago as the head of TransLink.

TransLink was a new agency at the time, one with a broad scope covering roads, transit and marine (through its ferry service). It also included planning, funding, building and operating, something less than 10 agencies even in the United States have as much purview over.

“It was the breadth of the mandate that I particularly liked and I thought the structure was sound and that the funding strategy was fixable,” Jacobsen says about why she came back to transportation.