Madeline Zhu | Policy Advisor, SMART Grants Program
U.S. Department of Transportation

Madeline Zhu is the Policy Advisor for the Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) Grants Program at the US Department of Transportation. She leads the programmatic work for SMART, a $500 million discretionary grant program investing in transportation technology demonstrations, which is operated out of the Office of the Secretary of Transportation, Research. SMART was created in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and is the nation's largest investment in smart cities and communities. Prior to SMART, Madeline spent 8 years leading revenue and sales for transportation technology companies across the ITS and smart cities vertical including Swiftly and Lacuna Technologies. There, she worked with transportation agencies and cities of all sizes across the US and globally, from Boston, Miami-Dade County, and Los Angeles, to Johannesburg, Adelaide, and major cities in Canada. Some of her projects included cloud-based operations management tools for transit, standardizing and scaling the reach of real-time passenger information systems, and supporting the digital management of the largest micromobility fleet in the US. She has developed new business models and partnerships between corporates, development organizations, and cities across Africa, which catalyzed millions of dollars of transportation infrastructure investment through new data tools.  Madeline’s technical expertise includes digital infrastructure, passenger information tools, curb and new mobility, onboard hardware, and open data standards development and implementation. Madeline is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Cape Town.