Lora loves helping her clients and employees grow and thrive. She enjoys seeing Foursquare ITP’s work become reality as well as helping her team members take on new responsibilities.
Lora Byala, AICP founded Foursquare ITP in 2006 and has led the company’s growth from just herself, to a few employees in her living room, to more than 60 staff across several offices. As President & CEO, she is responsible for guiding Foursquare ITP’s strategic direction, company culture, operations, business development, staff development, and more. She is a collaborative leader, seeking input and thoughts from others and considering many aspects of every decision. Lora is also a recognized expert in transit planning and transportation strategic planning and has more than 25 years of experience in the transportation field.
She emphasizes the value of data, innovation, and meaningful input from a variety of stakeholders, working to develop inclusive and equitable transit plans through collaboration and a team-based approach. Lora has played a lead role on many of Foursquare ITP’s high visibility studies, including bus network redesigns, transit agency strategic plans and organizational assessments, and as the overall contract manager for many long-term on-call relationships with a variety of transit agencies. Lora has also led several transit research studies for the Transit Cooperative Research Program and is an active member of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) committee on Bus Transit Systems.
Education
MST, Transportation
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
BSE, Systems Engineering (Transportation)
BA, Urban Studies
University of Pennsylvania