Travis County Judge Andy Brown serves as the Travis County Judge, presiding over the Travis County Commissioners Court, which oversees the County’s $2 billion annual budget. As County Judge, he serves as the County’s chief administrator and Director of Emergency Management.

Judge Brown is leading efforts to strengthen Central Texas by expanding access to affordable, high-quality childcare and advancing a new passenger rail connection between Austin and San Antonio.

Henry Cisneros is Founder & Senior Advisor of American Triple I, a developer, investor, and manager of infrastructure assets. Henry provides governance, leadership, and develops relationships with asset and investor partners.

Henry is the former federal Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), appointed by President Bill Clinton and serving from 1993 to 1997. During his tenure, Henry led initiatives that spurred reinvestment in public housing and helped revitalize many of America’s urban centers, leading to the nation’s highest home ownership rate. As the President’s chief representative to the nation’s cities, Mr. Cisneros personally worked in more than 200 U.S. cities in every one of the 50 states.

In 1981, he became the first Hispanic-American mayor of a major U.S. city, San Antonio, serving four terms. He is credited with helping to rebuild the city’s economic base, spurring the creation of jobs through massive infrastructure projects and downtown improvements, including a new airport terminal, a 65,000-seat domed stadium, underground flood diversion for the city’s Riverwalk, and a nuclear power generation project.

Ashika Ganguly is the Executive Director of Transit Forward, where she leads efforts to improve public transit access and infrastructure for all Austinites.

Born and raised in Austin, Ashika began her career as an elementary STEM teacher in Austin ISD, where she saw firsthand how policy decisions impact children and families across our city. This experience led her to pursue a Master’s in policy from UT Austin and begin a career in policy and advocacy. Ashika has since worked in policy research, student affairs at UT Austin, in the Texas House of Representatives and ran for Austin City Council in 2024. Ashika is actively involved in other civic organizations such as the Austin Chamber, the Pink Granite Foundation, and also serves on the Board of Directors of Caritas of Austin.

Caroline Mays, AICP, serves as Senior Director of Planning and Modal Programs. In this role, she is responsible for the management and control of the Aviation, Maritime, Public Transportation, Rail, and Transportation Planning and Programming divisions.

Mays is a recognized regional, state, and national leader experienced in multimodal transportation planning and programming, policy, and project development. Mays joined the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) in late 2012 and has held several positions including, Statewide Freight Coordinator, Freight Planning Branch Manager, Director of Freight and International Trade/Border Section, and Director of Freight, Trade and Connectivity. She was responsible for TxDOT’s statewide multimodal freight, international trade, and statewide corridor planning programs and was instrumental in establishing the multimodal freight planning program, developing the first multimodal Freight Mobility Plan, and the Texas-Mexico Border Transportation Master Plan.

Previously, she worked for the Atlanta Regional Commission MPO where she created the freight planning program, managed the development of an award-winning Atlanta Regional Freight Mobility Plan, and oversaw the Intelligent Transportation System planning program. She also worked as a transit planner for Rockland County, New York.

Moderator: Erica Brennes is a proud Austin native and the morning traffic anchor & Austin transportation guru at KXAN, Austin's NBC affiliate.

Erica started her career in broadcast journalism more than 20 years ago. But has had chapters outside of TV, including as the Director of Interactive Content for the Austin mobility app RideScout, where she hosted, produced and wrote an online show called Transit Trends that covered all things trending in the world of transportation.