- Alma Mater: Tulane University (undergrad) & American University (graduate)
- Favorite book: She is a a voracious reader
- Favorite TV show: "The West Wing"
- Favorite movie: "Wonder Woman"
- Favorite hobby(ies): Reading, cooking and trying new restaurants
- Fun fact about yourself: When she is not busy pushing for better transit in the DC metro area, she is also a wedding photographer.
- What is your favorite transit system (outside of the one you work for or have worked for!) and why?: Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, for one very simple reason — she can take the Expo Line to the beach!
Aimee Custis is the deputy director at Washington, D.C.'s Coalition for Smarter Growth, the leading advocacy organization for better transit in the Washington, D.C. region. ,where she has had a tremendous positive impact on transit and transit advocacy across the district's region.
Transit's success depends on far more than just agency operations. Ultimately, popular support for new routes, maintaining/increasing funding, and public understanding of the system are all crucial to its success. Custis has organized residents, written articles and educated the public on the importance of transit to everyone's lives.
Custis is also a longtime volunteer editor at the urbanist blog, "Greater Greater Washington." Over the past 7 years, Custis has written for the site extensively and helped shaped its direction and growth, including volunteering for a year as managing editor. She served on the board of directors for Young Professionals in Transportation from 2011-2013, heading up communications and then membership at a time when the organization was adding three to five new chapters a year in cities across the United States and Canada. Custis has led sessions on career development and personal branding at the Transportation Research Baord and in 2017 launched a mentoring series at the Coalition for Smarter Growth. She has also been active part of TransportationCamp, pushing for it to more heavily include transit advocacy.
She began her career in transit managing outreach and national grant programs for the Transportation Learning Center, an organization that coordinates front-line transit worker training through labor-management partnerships at agencies, including New York City Transit, New Jersey Transit, Central Ohio Transit Authority, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, TriMet, Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, and more.
Closer to home, Custis has been a transit activist in and around Washington, D.C. for years. Through her writing, community advocacy training, and outreach to local and regional officials, Custis has shaped public opinion and helped to raise the profile of the value of transit investment, and transit-oriented development to the economic vitality of the Washington region. There are not many great transit communicators, but Custis is one of them.
Custis has been involved in several successful transit campaigns, including for dedicated bus lanes on the busy 16th Street corridor in 2016, and the adoption of an 81-mile bus rapid transit plan in Montgomery County, Maryland, in 2013. Today, she's heavily involved in efforts to win a dedicated funding source for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Metro). With the enormous fiscal, safety and public relations challenges facing Metro today, her leadership and steadfast engagement on transit issues makes her a critical leader and transit partner.
"The work I do at the Coalition for Smarter Growth and really in transit as an industry, is really all about people. That's the difference between transit and a lot of other transportation. Transit is ultimately about people having access to things. In our work at the Coalition for Smarter Growth as transit advocates my job is ultimately all about helping people have better access to the things that they need. Being really people centered is something that I very much appreciate about my work."
"It's what I enjoy about my job; transit is all about helping people and providing access to the things that they need."
"I think one of the most challenging parts of my position is that ultimately my job is to push governments and elected officials to put their money where the mouth is and provide the public services that we need in transportation. I think one of the really challenging aspects of that is having the patience to move at a governmental pace is never quite as fast as you want it to be."
"Don't be afraid to reach out to people in the industry. Ultimately transit is really a people-based industry and is people-centered and everyone who works in the industry is, and was, at some point, where you are. Being willing to reach out to people to ask for help and collaborate has been valuable to me and it's what I always tell our interns not to be afraid to do."
