The top official currently overseeing the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) was nominated to take over as administrator by President Joe Biden on April 14.
Meera Joshi, who Biden named as FMCSA deputy administrator on his first day in office, needs Senate confirmation to become the administrator. As FMCSA deputy, she is the acting leader of the agency that oversees the trucking industry. The last Senate-confirmed leader of the FMCSA was Raymond Martinez, a Trump appointee, who stepped down in 2019.
An attorney, Joshi is a past chairwoman and CEO of the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission, the nation’s largest for-hire transportation regulator. In New York, she spearheaded novel Vision Zero campaigns using data tools to keep high-risk drivers and unsafe vehicles off city roads. She also led landmark policy, including establishing open transportation data standards for app-based providers, enacting the nation’s first for-hire driver pay protection program, and providing broad access to for-hire transportation for passengers who use wheelchairs, according to a bio provided by the Biden Administration.
With more than 500,000 interstate carriers and 4.7 million commercial driver's license (CDL) holders across the nation, the FMCSA and its 1,100 employees have overseen significant changes for drivers and carriers over the past four years. During the Trump Administration, the FMCSA finalized the implementation of electronic logging devices (ELD), enacted new hours of service regulations, and saw the trucking industry move to the front of national consciousness during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While Joshi has no specific trucking background, the Biden Administration is touting her more than 15 years’ experience in government oversight. Before taking over the city’s transportation regulation, Joshi was the inspector general for the New York City Department of Corrections. In that role, she was responsible for investigating corruption and criminality at all levels of city jail operations. She was also the first deputy executive director of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, which led police misconduct investigations.
For the past year, Joshi has been a principal and New York general manager with the transportation firm Sam Schwartz. Her bio on the firm's website describes Joshi as a “global transportation leader with wide-ranging experience navigating technological and regulatory change.”
She was a visiting scholar at New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy. Joshi was born and raised in Philadelphia. She holds a B.A. and a juris doctor degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
