By Nicole Morell, Director of Commununications
Shoshana Lew is the Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), which will host Harvard Kennedy School students through the Taubman Center’s Tony Gómez-Ibáñez Summer Fellowship for the third year. The fellowship, named after retired Harvard Kennedy School Professor José Antonio “Tony” Gómez-Ibáñez, provides an opportunity for returning Kennedy School students help accelerate the transportation, transit, and infrastructure policy priorities of a state, county, or city agency during the summer after their first year at HKS. Lew, who previously served as the Chief Operation Officer for the Rhode Island Department of Transportation in addition to multiple roles in the U.S. Department of Transportation, shares her insights on transportation, infrastructure, and working with HKS students below.
What interested you in the world of transportation?
I've worked in transportation and infrastructure for many years now, and I got here through a combined interest in the
built environment and public finance how it can impact people's lives. I have a deep interest in those two areas, and the place where they coalesce is the transportation space. Big projects define much of the world we live in and shape the way communities take shape. That's really what brought me to space and motivates me to stay in it.
So much of your transportation work has focused on sustainable transportation. What does that look like and why is it important to you?
One of the things that's motivating about transportation is that it can anchor a community, connect a community, and divide a community. So, thinking about how to make transportation more sustainable is not just about the air quality impacts, which of course are very important, but it's also about making sure that transportation is literally and figuratively a good neighbor to the people in its space. When I think about what makes a project environmentally sustainable, the things that make it cleaner also make it work better from a community-building perspective and from an economic perspective, which to me is what's interesting about it.
You previously worked for the Rhode Island Department of Transportation. What is something that the Colorado Department of Transportation manages that surprised you?
What surprised me the most when I moved to Colorado was that we run non-trivial artillery to help with avalanche control. The notion that you must keep roads that go up to 10,000 feet open in the winter is also something you simply don't have to deal with in other parts of the country. The harshness of the conditions, whether it's winter storms or fire season – which is quite aggressive on the public plans – is salient in Colorado in a way it isn't always in other parts of the country.
What advice would you have for students seeking a career in transportation or infrastructure, particularly in the current environment?
Understanding that the field isn't what it used to be is both important and exciting for younger people looking to get into this space. Twenty years ago, transportation was an engineer's field only. I think the concept that people with non-traditional transportation backgrounds would end up in it, let alone thrive, is relatively new.
One of the things I'm most proud of that we've changed in the years that I've been at Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is the breadth of perspectives that are represented both on our executive team and at the working level across the state. There's a tendency to discount transportation as a field that might not be accessible to people from different backgrounds. There were certainly some people in Colorado not thrilled that I had a degree in history. Having people with humanities and social science background – and the ability to model sophisticated things ranging from finance to climate – are skills that DOTs need. Those are skills that people in the transportation field need.
Is there anything from your undergrad at Harvard that you look back to in your current career?
Disciplines like history, in my view, prepare people very well for careers in government. The skills you learn in a humanities field have many applications. Figuring out how the kind of current configuration of anything, whether it's a regulatory analysis, a piece of infrastructure, or something else, comes together is predicated on understanding its past and its present. For me, a history degree taught me how to do research and learning. Historiography is not something most people in the transportation sector think they need to know, but it is the skills that taught me how to be a useful government practitioner. I think you can get that from other fields as well.
Why is it important for you to come to the Kennedy School to be a part of events like the one we had on Tuesday, and then also to host students as part of the fellowship?
I've been involved with the Taubman Center since I worked in Rhode Island, when I got my start in local government. That set of connections has been an incredible way to collaborate and take a break from the day-to-day practitioner approach and to process what this work means with people who care deeply about it and think about it from a more academic perspective. Having that Taubman Center connection has made me a better practitioner in the state and local space, and I have really looked for ways to stay involved and expand those connections.
In terms of the Tony Gómez-Ibáñez Fellowships that we have had the privilege of hosting three times – and we'll get to host again in 2026 – I can't say enough about how fantastic our fellows who've been and how much they've really helped move the conversation in Colorado.
From our first fellow, who ended up in front of the governor leading one of the best conversations on authority policy topics, to our most recent fellow who tackled the details of our sub-recipient relationships with local governments at a time when all our grants were in a precarious state because of the change in the federal scene. All of those were significant projects at critical times, and the capacity they brought to us for the short time they were in residence really made a difference. To quote Mikhaila Sung MPP 2026, our most recent scholar, she embraced her outsider status to help us delve into the depths of real challenges. And that has really borne out with all of our fellows.
What advice do you have for students considering their next step after the Kennedy School?
This is a really important time for smart people coming out of programs like the Kennedy School to consider a career in state and local government. Having worked on both the federal and state and local sides myself, they've both been incredible experiences, but the opportunity for impact right now in state and local is tremendous. Right now, it's one of the stabilizing forces, running everything from basic programs people rely on to executing transformative change. The work we're doing on the state and local side is certainly affected by some of those tumultuous waters at the federal level, but that doesn't make what we’re doing any less important.
It's easy to lose faith in institutions when things aren't going as optimistically as planned. But I don't think that that makes the work any less important and would just encourage folks to think about jumping into the fray, even if some of the work is maybe not as glamorous as it might have been three years ago.
