Jean Todt, Special Envoy for Road Safety, United Nations
Mr. Jean Todt has been the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety since April 2015. He is the former President of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA). He was first elected to this post in October 2009 and re-elected in 2013 and 2017 until 2021. Between 2006 and 2009, Mr. Todt was Chief Executive Officer of Ferrari. Prior to that, he has held senior level positions overseeing racing and sporting activities in Ferrari and PSA Peugeot Citroën Group. Mr. Todt started his career in 1966 as a rally co-driver and participated in the World Rally Championship until 1981. He won the World Rally Championship for Manufacturers with a Talbot Lotus in 1981.
Mr. Todt also devotes his time to several charitable causes. He is one of the Founders and Vice-President of the Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle Epinière (ICM), an institute devoted to medical research for brain and spinal cord disorders. He was awarded the Humanitarian of the Year Award by the United Nations Association of New York in 2016.
Mr. Todt studied economics, business and marketing at the Ecole des Cadres in Paris. He was born in 1946 in Pierrefort, France. He has one son and shares his life with actress, film producer and UNDP Goodwill Ambassador Michelle Yeoh.
Honorable Michael E. Graham, Member, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
Michael Graham took the oath of office as the 45th Member of the National Transportation Safety Board on January 3, 2020.
Before coming to the NTSB, Member Graham was with Textron Aviation, Inc. (Cessna/Hawker/Beechcraft) from 1997 to 2019. Since 2012 he served as their Director of Flight Operations Safety, Security & Standardization and was responsible for the safe and secure operations of all domestic and international flights conducted in support of the company. The scope of his responsibility included managing the flight operation’s Safety Management System and its certification, administering the Emergency Response Plan, supervising Air Safety Investigations, and overseeing two company airports and a control tower.
Mr. Graham joined Cessna as a Demonstration Pilot and held positions in Production Flight Test and Delivery. He was instrumental in the merging of Beechcraft flight operations with Cessna’s after its acquisition. Mike also started the company’s highly successful Aviation Safety Action Program which became the model program for Part 91 operators.
Member Graham also provided safety leadership to multiple industry and government advisory committees during his tenure at Textron Aviation. He served as Chairman of the Air Charter Safety Foundation and Board of Governors, led the Single Pilot Safety Working Group of the National Business Aviation Association’s Safety Committee and was a member of the General Aviation Information Analysis Team. Mr. Graham was presented with Flight Safety Foundation’s 2019 Business Aviation Meritorious Service Award for his work.
Mr. Graham began his career in the U.S. Navy as a Naval Aviator flying A-7’s and F/A-18’s and completed two operational deployments including Combat Air Patrol missions over Iraq and Kuwait in support of Southern Watch. He served as a F/A-18 Flight Instructor, Evaluator and model manager for all Navy and Marine F/A-18’s. He was handpicked to develop the first ever F/A-18 Aircrew Coordination Training syllabus and facilitated the training of the first group of instructors. He received a Navy Achievement Medal for his development of an Occupational Safety and Health program and twice received the Top Eleven Award for best landing grades aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
From 1995-1997 he worked at Boeing/McDonnell Douglas as a F/A-18 aircrew instructor. Along with instructing, he developed courseware and served as an operational analyst and lead integration engineer receiving the Quality Achievement Award for his work.
Member Graham earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico. He is also a certified Airline Transport Pilot with 10,000 flight hours and is type rated in six different Citation models.
Steve Kiefer, Chairman, The Kiefer Foundation
Steve Kiefer is the founder of The Kiefer Foundation whose mission is to end distracted driving and all associated traffic deaths and injuries. The Kiefer Foundation was established in 2016, in honor of his son Mitchel Kiefer, who was tragically killed by a distracted driver on September 19th, 2016. In July 2018, Kiefer received the Distinguished Service Citation from the Automotive Hall of Fame honoring the work he has done to end distracted driving through the Kiefer Foundation.
Kiefer recently retired from General Motors, after nearly 40 years of experience in the automotive industry, including leadership positions in major markets around the world. Kiefer’s most recent position was President, GM International, a position he has held since November 2019. Kiefer was a member of the GM Senior Leadership Team. In this role, he was responsible for GM operations outside of North America and China. His mandate was to deliver profitable growth in the 60+ international markets in which GM competes.
Prior to this role Kiefer spent five years as Senior Vice President, Global Purchasing and Supply Chain, where he delivered $2B of annual cost reductions for 5 consecutive years, while significantly improving supplier relationships. Kiefer joined GM in September 2013 as Vice President, Global Powertrain, after more than a decade of senior leadership roles with the automotive supplier Delphi.
Kiefer has deep cross functional expertise in all areas of the automotive business, including engineering, sales, purchasing, supply chain, operations, finance, government relations, corporate strategy and general business management. Throughout his career, Kiefer has focused on product innovation to drive customer value and profitable growth.
Kiefer is a member of the Michigan Governor’s Traffic Safety Advisory Commission and the Michigan State University College of Engineering Alumni Association Board. He was GM’s key executive at Michigan State University and previously served as a member of the Berkeley Engineering Advisory Board, the Supervisory Board of Adam Opel AG in Germany and the board of directors of United Way for Southeastern Michigan.
Kiefer received a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Michigan. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University, which included engineering studies at RWTH Aachen University in Germany.
Henry Liu, PhD, Director, Mcity & Center for Connected Automated Transportation Research
Professor Henry Liu is a tenured professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Director of Mcity at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is also a Research Professor at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and the Director for the Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (USDOT Region 5 University Transportation Center).
Prof. Liu is the founder for the Next Generation Transportation Systems program in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department of the University of Michigan. From August 2017 to August 2019, Prof. Liu served as DiDi Fellow and Chief Scientist on Smart Transportation for DiDi Global, Inc., one of the leading mobility service providers in the world. Prior to joining the University of Michigan, Prof. Liu was an Assistant then Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Prof. Liu received his Ph.D. degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2000 and his bachelor’s degree in Automotive Engineering from Tsinghua University in China in 1993.
Prof. Liu conducts interdisciplinary research at the interface of transportation engineering, automotive engineering, and artificial intelligence. Specifically, his scholarly interests concern traffic flow monitoring, modeling, and control, as well as testing and evaluation of connected and automated vehicles. He has published more than 130 refereed journal papers. Prof. Liu and his research team has pioneered the development of the world’s first connected vehicle-based traffic signal optimization system, OSaaS (Optimizing Signals as a Service), that has been implemented in the City of Birmingham, Michigan with a total 32 intersections. He and his team also developed the patent-pending augmented reality system for testing autonomous vehicles and the technology has been licensed to and implemented in the American Center for Mobility in 2021.
Professor Liu and his work have been widely recognized in public media for promoting smart transportation innovations. He has appeared on a number of media outlets including CNBC, Forbes, Technode, Tech Xplore, WXYZ, etc. In 2019, Professor Liu was invited to testify on the national transportation research agenda in front of the US House Subcommittee on Research and Technology.
Professor Liu has nurtured a new generation of scholars, and some of his PhD students and postdocs have joined first class universities such as Columbia University, Purdue University, RPI, etc. Prof. Liu is the managing editor of Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems and a board member for ITS America.
Lorraine Martin, President and CEO of the National Safety Council (NSC)
Lorraine Martin is an accomplished Fortune 500 senior executive and business leader with 35 years of experience developing successful global enterprises, with particular expertise in the aerospace sector. She speaks and consults frequently on high-profile issues, including the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion to business culture and performance.
Martin has a proven track record of helping shape federal standards and legislation; facilitating strategic, international partnerships; driving international market expansion; guiding domestic defense strategy; leading talent-development programs; and championing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across an enterprise.
Today, Martin serves as President and CEO of the National Safety Council (NSC): America’s leading safety advocate for over 100 years with a mission to save lives, from the workplace to anyplace. In this role, she helps guide the nation’s employers on strategies to eliminate the leading causes of preventable death and injury by focusing its efforts on the workplace, roadway and impairment. Martin also chairs the Road to Zero Coalition, the nation’s largest traffic safety coalition working to eliminate traffic deaths by 2050.
Prior to joining NSC, Martin spent 30 years in increasingly senior leadership roles at Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), most recently as Executive Vice President and Deputy of Rotary & Mission Systems. In this role, she led operations of the company’s $16 billion global security and aerospace division that included research, design, development, manufacturing, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. She oversaw a team of 34,000 employees across four continents with operations in more than 75 worldwide facilities to consistently deliver highly complex projects on time while beating customer cost estimates.
Among her top Lockheed Martin achievements, Martin led the largest defense aircraft program in history: the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter — considered the world’s most advanced fighter jet to this day. Martin also led the successful operational and cultural integration of the Sikorsky Aircraft Company, a global leader best known for its Black Hawk helicopters, upon its $9 billion acquisition by Lockheed Martin in 2015.
Martin is sought-after by publicly traded companies around the world for her leadership vision and STEM expertise. She currently serves on the board of directors and audit committee for Kennametal (NYSE: KMT), a $2.4 billion global materials science firm that serves customers across aerospace, earthworks, energy, general engineering and transportation. She also serves on the board of directors for IperionX Limited (ASX: IPX), a U.S.-based exploration and mining services company with a mission to be the leading developer of low-to-zero-carbon, sustainable and low-cost critical minerals to support material supply chains for advanced American industries, including aerospace, defense, automotive and consumer goods.
Outside the boardroom, Martin is actively involved with and passionately dedicated to social impact endeavors that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. She is the co-founder and president of the Pegasus Springs Foundation, a nonprofit organization working to achieve educational equity by collaborating with educators, schools and communities across the country. She has served on several nonprofit boards, including INROADS, which is working to elevate underrepresented talent throughout their careers as well as Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Central Florida.
As a champion for advancing women and girls in STEM, Martin was named among STEMConnector’s 100 Corporate Women Leaders in 2017. She has worked with numerous organizations in support of this mission including Girls Inc., Girls Who Code and Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence.
Martin is a proud veteran, having served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, where she held various leadership positions for software-intensive technology and development programs. She earned a M.S. in Computer Science from Boston University and a B.A. in Computational Mathematics from DePauw University.
Chris Mullen, Senior Director of Organizational Safety, Aurora
Chris Mullen is currently the Senior Director of Organizational Safety for Aurora, leading a team of experts designing and implementing Aurora’s Safety Management System, Safety Investigations, and providing Operational Safety governance and oversight. She was previously the Uber Advanced Technologies Group Safety Standards Director, leading a team of engineers, data scientists, and policy experts to identify, develop, interpret and apply safety standards, industry best practices, safety metrics, analyses and conformance practices in support of the safe development and deployment of self driving systems.
Prior to joining ATG, Mullen was VP of Research and Development for Solera, Inc. responsible for creating an advanced automotive repair research and training center, focused on development and training of welding, electromechanical systems, paint & refinish, heavy duty truck repair, and insurance estimation.
Mullen was the Director of the Technology Research Division at State Farm®, responsible for auto and building technology research units, automobile manufacturer relations, the Vehicle Research Facility, and the Technology Research and Innovation Laboratory, focusing on vehicle advanced technology, functionality, repairability, occupant and highway safety, as well as building safety, structure, and durability. She also held engineering management positions for technical and regulatory affairs with Toyota Motor North America and Nissan North America, focused on crashworthiness regulation and biomechanics research.
Her past industry board positions include the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITSA), chair of the Leadership Circle of Mcity at the University of Michigan, Associate for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM) board of directors and executive committee, chair of the Industry Advisory Board for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies, chaired the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturer’s Biomechanics Committee and was a board member for the engineering departments of two universities. She is named on 32 US Patents and has served on multiple industry technical committees to develop best practice and standards on event data recorders, vehicle compatibility, side air bag out of position testing, and alcohol detection systems.
