GRTC announces new CEO, the transit system’s first female head

GRTC Transit System announces the unanimous selection of its next Chief Executive Officer today, concluding its year-long search for a new CEO. Julie Timm will begin on September 23, 2019 as GRTC’s sixth CEO and first female CEO in company history. Timm brings more than 20 years of experience in customer-focused strategic planning and the management of widely diverse transportation capital projects in the local, state, and federal arenas.

Timm returns to Virginia from Tennessee, where she served the past three years as the Chief Development Officer for Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority and Regional Transportation Authority of Middle TN, recently rebranded as WeGo Public Transit. Timm led WeGo’s input into Nashville’s $6B multimodal transit referendum and served as the WeGo Staff Advisor to Nashville’s Transit and Affordability Task Force.

“I am so excited to be coming home to Virginia and honored for the opportunity to serve the Greater Richmond community,” Timm said in a statement. “Mobility is an indispensable requirement for how we define our communities and how we connect to housing, jobs, education, healthcare, food, and recreation. More importantly, it is an essential element to how we connect to each other. This time of growth and transformation for Greater Richmond opens a valuable window for us to clearly define how we will advance those mobility connections for the prosperity of all the residents of our region.”

A native of Hampton Roads, Timm previously worked as the transit development officer for Hampton Roads Transit from 2012 to 2016. Timm holds a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Old Dominion University and a Master of Business Administration from Vanderbilt University.

GRTC’s Board of Directors guided the national recruitment effort during the past year, conducting thorough interviews and reviewing two rounds of candidates. While the CEO search occurred, GRTC was led by two Interim CEOs, Charles Mitchell (retired Chief Operating Officer) from August 2018 to June 2019 and Sheryl Adams (current Chief Operating Officer) from July 2019 until Ms. Timm begins next month.