One word to describe yourself: Curious
Alma Mater: University of California, Berkeley; San José State University .
Fast fact about yourself: I taught myself how to clip into road bike pedals during the pandemic and have been an avid cyclist since.
What’s your best experience on transit and what made it memorable? Taking transit-enabled backpacking trips! My first solo High Sierra trip from the Bay Area was in 2015 and was accomplished without a car with help from Bay Area Rapid Transit, the Amtrak San Joaquins service and Yosemite Area Regional Transportation System.
Anna Harvey, currently the deputy project director of engineering for the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, began her career as an associate engineer at Parsons Brinckerhoff in 2011 for San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency's Central Subway project. While at Parsons Brinckerhoff, she attained her professional engineer's license in California in 2014. By the time she left the private sector in 2016, she had advanced to the role of Senior Engineer and was working on the Northern California section of California High Speed Rail.
She then moved to the public sector, where she joined the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) in the Capital Projects Division, learning the nuances of public funding while also gaining experience with Caltrans' project development and highway toll lanes, delivering a $1 million project study report for the 101-280 managed lanes project. She left SFCTA for the San Francisco Planning Department in 2019, where she served as the rail program manager for the city, honing stakeholder coordination skills and successfully delivering the Southeast Rail Station Study, which reviewed alternatives for a new Caltrain station in San Francisco. During her time at the planning department, she simultaneously pursued a Master of Science in Transportation Management at San José State University during the pandemic while parenting a young child.
In 2022, Harvey returned to her capital delivery roots and joined the Transbay Joint Powers Authority in her current role, where she oversees design, right of way and major third-party agreements for The Portal, which advanced to the pre-Full Funding Grant Agreement stage in the Federal Transit Administration's Capital Investment Grant process in May 2024.
Harvey is described as someone who has always been a team player and at the forefront of seeking to enact positive culture change at her various employers. At Parsons Brinckerhoff, she was part of the early-career Professional Growth Network, where she took part in an international case competition, organized trans-national virtual happy hours to meet co-workers in other hemispheres and won a national award for professionals with less than five years of experience. In her public sector roles, she took part in employee feedback groups and also began supervising interns.
During the pandemic, she helped roll out new methods of virtual community outreach on the Southeast Rail Station Study, using Zoom and live translation in breakout rooms to bridge language divides and meet community members at more convenient times or outdoors at a community garden when needed or requested. She continues to speak at professional organizations and with local business groups to help drive more engagement from the industry and the community.
As part of her current role, Harvey organizes formal and informal interagency discussions and field visits in order to extract lessons learned from other organizations and projects, including visits to Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 2023 and Sound Transit in 2025. She was recently appointed to a two-year term as the graduate trustee for the board of the Mineta Transportation Institute.
She’s an active participant in the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), particularly as a member of the Leadership ATPA Class of 2023 and multiple subcommittees, as well as a member of the WTS International - Bay Area Chapter.
She also enjoys speaking to school groups at various levels about her career path as a woman in engineering leadership. She has been a guest lecturer at area universities, as well as a featured speaker at numerous professional organizations. She volunteers at her child's K-8 school and is an engaged alumna of both San José State and UC Berkeley, along with of the international school she attended for high school, the United World College in northern New Mexico.
Is there a specific experience that led you to where you are today?
I spent much of my childhood in Singapore in the 1990s, and I started riding the bus alone at a young age. Early on, I once missed my stop. My panic subsided when I realized I could just ride to the terminal and reverse course back to my neighborhood. My fascination with transit (and transit maps) was born.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
Tackling complex issues with a great team and working with stakeholders to create a shared vision for project success.
What’s the most challenging part of your job?
Bridging different perspectives while continuing to move forward, often in a constrained time or budget environment.
What is the accomplishment you’re most proud of and why?
At work, it's been helping to advance the portal in the FTA Capital Investment Grant process—one big step closer to construction and revenue service.
What is an accomplishment you would like to work towards in your career?
Sharing a celebratory beverage with a team I helped to build on opening day of a major infrastructure project.
What is your best advice/tip/best practice you can share from your area of expertise?
Read the whole contract, hold the door open for those coming up behind you and be a good human to others, regardless of where they sit on the organization chart.
About the Author
Megan Perrero
Editor in Chief
Megan Perrero is a national award-winning B2B journalist and lover of all things transit. Currently, she is the Editor in Chief of Mass Transit magazine, where she develops and leads a multi-channel editorial strategy while reporting on the North American public transit industry.
Prior to her position with Mass Transit, Perrero was the senior communications and external relations specialist for the Shared-Use Mobility Center, where she was responsible for helping develop internal/external communications, plan the National Shared Mobility Summit and manage brand strategy and marketing campaigns.
Perrero serves as the board secretary for Latinos In Transit and is a member of the American Public Transportation Association Marketing and Communications Committee. She holds a bachelor’s degree in multimedia journalism with a concentration in magazine writing and a minor in public relations from Columbia College Chicago.