Education

Karla Sisco, Stillwater, OK, has served as Tribal Specialist for the Southern Plains Tribal Technical Assistance Program at Oklahoma State University for the past seven years. In her role in the TTAP program, Karla coordinates and conducts training, manages conference planning, serves as newsletter editor, and handles communications. She enjoys enhancing partnerships between tribes and local, state, and federal governments.

Karla received a bachelor’s degree in English from Northwestern Oklahoma State University, with a minor in journalism. She has received certificates in the following: NHI Instructor Development Training, Transportation Safety Institute’s Instructor’s Course in Bus Operator Training, Transportation Safety Institute’s Instructor’s Course in Para-transit Operator Training, and National Safety Council Defensive Driver Instructor Training.

Karla currently serves on National Local Technical Assistance Program Association’s Conference Planning Committee, Nominating Committee, and Safety Work Group. In 2015, she joined FHWA’s LTAP/TTAP Strategic Planning Committee. She also serves on the Committee on the Native American Transportation Issues ABE80 Committee of the Transportation Research Board.

Louie currently serves as Assistant Vice President for Student Success at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). In this role, he serves on the Student Affairs Leadership Team, where his work focuses largely on assessment, strategic planning and student professional development. Prior to joining UTEP, Louie served as Director of Diversity and Inclusion at one of the country’s largest law firms, Proskauer Rose LLP, in New York City. In that role, Louie led Proskauer’s firm-wide diversity initiative, focusing on the professional and career development of lawyers from diverse backgrounds, with an emphasis on recruitment, retention and promotion.

Prior to joining Proskauer, Louie was on the leadership team at Sponsors for Educational
Opportunity (SEO), a not-for-profit organization based in New York City dedicated to diversifying Wall Street. Louie led SEO’s Corporate Law internship program where he recruited, trained and mentored groups of pre-law interns working at some of New York’s elite firms. He also helped SEO develop its Corporate Law Institute, a law school preparatory program designed to help students acclimate to the law school environment and achieve academic success.

Before joining SEO, Louie was an attorney in the litigation department in the New York office of global law firm Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, where his practice focused on intellectual property and employment law matters. He also served on the firm’s diversity and recruiting committees and helped develop a mentoring program in partnership with Harlem schools.

Louie received a B.B.A. in Human Resource Management from Baylor University, a J.D. from Columbia Law School and is a Cornell Certified Diversity Professional. He is a native of El Paso, Texas.

Morgan Ross is the Program Coordinator for the Mountain West Region Tribal Technical Assistance Program. She is a well-rounded professional with prior 7+ years of experience in office management and training, customer service, sales, operations management, and business to business relations. Having a love for organization, learning, and people makes working with tribes to create better, safer communities a perfect pairing of skills and passion. Although she is relatively new to Tribal Transportation she jumped in with both feet, joining as many partnerships and attending as many meetings as possible.

Joseph Kane is a researcher at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program in Washington, DC. His work contributes to the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative, with a focus on transportation and freight movement. Within these areas of research, he has explored infrastructure’s central economic role across different regions as well as its relationship to opportunity and resiliency. He has engaged directly with a variety of public and private sector leaders at the federal, state, and local level, aiming to better quantify the effects of increased infrastructure investment, including impacts on metropolitan labor markets. Prior to Brookings, he was an economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. He holds a master’s degree in urban and environmental planning from the University of Virginia and a B.A. in economics and history from the College of William and Mary.