Advancing the Vision

The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) Advisory Council is comprised of a small group of high-level transportation professionals from across Texas and every sector of the transportation world. The council, which meets annually, offers a tremendous service to the Institute by advising on transportation issues and trends and supporting TTI’s research programs and initiatives. TTI profiles several council members in each issue of Researcher.

Jeffrey C. Arndt

President and CEO,
VIA Metropolitan Transit
San Antonio, Texas

Jeffrey Arndt joined VIA in February 2012 as deputy CEO/chief of business support services. His expertise encompasses transit service and capital facility development, training and safety, financial management and planning, labor relations, special event transit/traffic management, and transit operations. He previously served in management positions at First Transit, and Parsons Brinckerhoff and Houston METRO for 25 years, achieving the position of senior vice president of operations/chief operating officer. Arndt also spent five years as a research scientist/research specialist at TTI.

Arndt serves on the American Public Transportation Association Bus Safety Committee and on the Board of Directors for Centro San Antonio, the Texas Diversity Council, the South West Transit Association and the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce.

Robin L. Autenrieth

Department Head, Zachry Department of Civil Engineering
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas

Robin Autenrieth has been department head of the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering in the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University since April 2013. She has a joint appointment in both the Department of Civil Engineering and the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Public Health. She joined Texas A&M in 1986 as an assistant professor and has served the university in numerous positions, including senior associate dean for academic affairs.

The Zachry Department of Civil Engineering is ranked eighth (undergraduate) and ninth (graduate) among all civil engineering programs at U.S. public institutions. With more than 60 faculty, nearly 1,000 undergraduate students and over 400 graduate students, the department is the largest civil engineering program in the country.

Gary Slagel

President and CEO,
CapitalSoft, Inc.
Richardson, Texas

Gary Slagel is co-founder of CapitalSoft and has been president and CEO since its inception in 1999. He is responsible for the operations of the company, which is one of the leading providers of enterprise software for efficiently managing capital programs for the public- and private-sector construction markets. For 17 years, Slagel held numerous leadership positions at Texas Instruments in Dallas.

As mayor of Richardson, Texas, from 1991 through 2011, he was instrumental in the development of the Richardson Telecom Corridor, which is home to more than 600 technology companies. He serves on the board of directors for Dallas Area Rapid Transit and on the Regional Transportation Council. He also has served as president of the North Central Texas Council of Governments.