HiPERconversations: Brian Kelly, CEO of California High-Speed Rail Authority
For change efforts big or small, get all of your stakeholders invested in the solution. You do so with high integrity, radical transparency, being honest about the challenges being faced, and doubling down on your emphasis on mission-driven performance.
Those are the key takeaways from my recent HiPERleadership podcast interview with Brian Kelly, CEO of California High-Speed Rail Authority.
In business and in life, the expression “building bridges” typically refers to improving the relationship between two or more groups of people. In the case of Brian Kelly, CEO of California High-Speed Rail, he’s excelled at building bridges both figuratively and literally.
Brian was the first-ever Secretary of the newly formed (2013) California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA), and inherited the responsibility for completing the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, one of the biggest public works projects in California history. Though this project was not without huge challenges, ultimately Brian used extreme transparency with stakeholders - the governor, state legislators, and constituents - to gain their trust and get the bridge completed for the citizens of California.
Brian found that the quickest path to “building bridges” was to make his engineers, the subject-matter experts, his PR people for the project (something many discouraged). There were many publicly known challenges in terms of budget and construction, and Brian figured that the best way to build trust with legislators and constituents was to be transparent on the reasons behind the increase in costs associated with construction.
Fast forward to 2018, Brian is tapped by then California Governor Jerry Brown to take over the California High-Speed Rail project, one of the biggest construction projects in the world. Ultimately Brian accepted the job because he believes in the mission of California High-Speed Rail: to connect Californians across the state safely, efficiently, affordably and more environmentally friendly than any other transportation option in the country.
As we learned from our episode with Leigh Steinberg, rebounding is a key trait of HiPER Leaders, and Brian Kelly is no different. Shortly after taking the CEO role for California High-Speed Rail, he was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), which put him in ICU for five weeks on a ventilator and a long rehabilitation process after.
Through this experience, not only did Brian’s empathy for others skyrocket, the experience gave him perspective on the important things in life, and it reified his sense of purpose and mission: to serve the people of California.
Give this episode a listen, and please share your ideas on how to drive effective urgency!
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As Chairman, David is responsible for the overall direction and strategy of the company, and for evangelizing the HiPER Movement across the world. David earned his Bachelor of Science from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania.
Brian Kelly is the Chief Executive Officer of the California High-Speed Rail Authority. Kelly served as the first secretary of the new California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA), an agency created in 2013, which focused solely on transportation. At CalSTA, Kelly oversaw eight departments, boards and commissions 38,000 employees and a budget of $18.1 billion – one of the largest portfolios in the State of California.
During his tenure at CalSTA, Brian's accomplishments included passing Senate Bill 1 (SB 1), the single largest investment in California’s transportation infrastructure, moving forward the nation’s first state rulemaking to allow the test and deployment of autonomous vehicles, and breaking ground on the first high-speed rail system in the nation in California’s Central Valley.
Prior to that, Kelly had spent almost two decades at the center of major transportation policy decisions in the state of California by serving four successive Senate President pro Tempores.