Shyam Kannan

Biography: Shyam Kannan is HDR’s lead for Transportation Planning and Transit in the Mid-Atlantic. He’s responsible for planning, directing and monitoring all aspects of large multidisciplinary transit and transportation planning projects, business activities and thought leadership including regional planning, forecasting/modeling, surface transit, subway/commuter rail, zero emissions vehicles, mobility equity, transit facilities and providing strategy for transit properties. Prior to joining HDR he served as WMATA’s Vice President of Planning from 2012-2022. He developed a life’s passion for improving America’s cities as a kid while working evenings at his family’s small business, a laundromat in Philadelphia, and again during four years of public service in the classrooms of East Los Angeles and Harlem, New York. He earned master’s degrees in public policy and urban planning from Harvard, is an active member of ULI Washington, and is the co-chair of the American Public Transit Association’s Transit-Oriented Communities subcommittee.