Catherine L. Ross

Dr. Catherine L. Ross is the world’s expert on megaregions—how to bring together regions on transportation, water, energy, land, housing, health to create great places to live that compete in a global world. She is the director of Georgia Institute of Technology’s Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development (CQGRD) and deputy director of the National Center for Transportation System Productivity and Management, a $14 million designation.  Dr. Ross is vice president of Euquant, Inc. an Atlanta-based economic and planning consulting firm. In July 2009, she was selected to advise the Obama Administration on the first-ever White House Office of Urban Affairs.

She is the editor of Megaregions: Planning for Global Competitiveness (Island Press, 2009) and the co-author of The Inner City: Urban Poverty and Economic Development in the Next Century (1997). She has authored more than 400 reports, articles, books, and monographs.

Dr. Ross served as the first executive director of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA), an innovative regional state agency created by the Georgia Legislature in 1999. Further, she served as a senior policy advisor for the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences and has held several other national leadership positions including president of the National Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP). Dr. Ross is also a member of the AAA Auto Club Group Board of Directors and serves on the executive committee and chairs the audit, finance, and ethics committee.
 
Ross earned bachelor degrees from Kent State University, a master’s and a doctorate degree in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University. She completed post-doctorate work at the University of California, Berkeley.

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