Gabe Klein

Gabe Klein (born February 14, 1971) is an entrepreneur, author, investor and former government official. Klein was Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) from May 16, 2011 to December, 2013. He was appointed to this position by Mayor Rahm Emanuel when he took office on May 16, 2011.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4] Klein was also the Director of the District of Columbia Department of Transportation (DDOT) from the end of 2008 until the end of Mayor Adrian Fenty's term, December 31, 2010. Prior, Klein was an Executive with Boston-based Zipcar. He recently authored a book titled Start-Up City: Inspiring Private and Public Entrepreneurship, Getting Projects Done, and Having Fun published by Island Press

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Early life and education

Gabe Klein was born in Hartford, Connecticut.^[5] Before high school he spent ages 10–11 studying under Swami Satchidananda at the Yogaville Vidyalayam interfaith school^[6] in Buckingham County, Virginia. He graduated from Virginia Tech in 1994 and holds a degree in marketing management.

Career

Gabe Klein's career began working as Director of Stores for Bikes USA. Bikes USA was the nation's largest bike retailer in the 1990s. Klein had Director-level roles at ProfessionaLink, a national technology-consulting start-up based in Washington D.C. where he led marketing and business development efforts for Fortune 1000 Companies. At the end of 2002, Klein became regional Vice President for Zipcar, overseeing the car sharing system in the D.C. region (2002–2006).

Klein was hired by Founder Robin Chase at the end of 2002 to spearhead growth in the nascent startup which had less than 30 cars in Washington D.C. and no more than 150 nationally. He convinced the D.C. government to give Zipcar on-street parking for their cars.^[7] Klein and his team worked on models for fleet management, operations, and marketing, helping the start-up gain its footing to scale nationally and eventually internationally.

Concurrently, Klein worked on a second business model with 2 business partners and input from the Government of the District of Columbia. The plan was for a mobile food truck concept after Klein was inspired by Howard Schultz's book, "Pour Your Heart Into It," about the rise of Starbucks and after seeing the mobile Mud Truck on the streets of New York City. The company he co-founded, "On The Fly," was an electric vehicle vending company and the food trucks themselves were branded "SmartKarts." On the Fly was one of the first multi-unit and multi-channel food truck companies in the U.S. with brick and mortar stores and mobile catering operations added in 2008. On The Fly custom built electric SmartKarts were able to work on the street, or sidewalk, serving local, fresh, natural foods to the DC area. Ironically, the new business model was stymied by bureaucracies within the District Government. Gabe turned the company over to his partners when Mayor Adrian Fenty asked him to lead the District of Columbia Department of Transportation which was one of the agencies that kept On The Fly from flourishing by disallowing free-flowing access to the curbside.^[8] Gabe Klein served 12 years in the private sector before moving to the public sector.

Currently Klein is a Special Venture Partner at Fontinalis Partners in Detroit ^[9]

In November 2020, Klein was named a volunteer member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the United States Department of Transportation.^[10]

Washington, D.C.

Gabe was appointed by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty to be Director of the District of Columbia Department of Transportation (DDOT) in December, 2008 and served until the end of Fenty's term on December 31, 2010. Klein immediately solicited feedback from a variety of stakeholders and advocates to determine how to reinvent the government agency as a customer-focused operation. After months of work, Klein and the DDOT team released their first "Action Agenda"^[11] modeled on the New York City Sustainable Streets plan released the previous year.^[12] Under the Fenty administration, Gabe Klein oversaw the following new and on-going projects and initiatives: