Our annual Chapter-driven membership recruitment drive, is a full week of creative activities to help bolster local Chapter membership and participation, and bring transportation industry professionals from all modes under the COMTO banner!

During COMTO Week, On Thursday, November 18^th, the COMTO Jacksonville handed out 70 #thanksgiving meals to residents at Sulzbacher Village with Local ATU & IAM employees and the with JTA.

In addition, later that day COMTO Jacksonville and JTA hosted a National Webinar about the JTA’s Autonomous Vehicle Program. COMTO outstanding feature speaker was Bernard Schmidt, JTA Vice President of Automation. Schmidt spoke about the innovative and groundbreaking technology, how the AV Program is creating opportunities in the workforce development space and fostering community relationships.

COMTO Jacksonville would like to thank COMTO National, Jacksonville Transportation Authority and the Jacksonville Chapter for pulling this event together. Special Thanks to JTA CEO Mr. Ford, COMTO National Chair Woman Tanya Adams, JTA David Cawton, COMTO National Staff Gatwiri Muthara and COMTO Jacksonville Chapter President Chris Macklin

Recipients

The COMTO Jacksonville chapter is proud to announce we have two recipients that received 3 awards at the 2021 COMTO Industry Awards on September 30, 2021. The 2021 COMTO Industry Awards were presented to individuals, chapters and organizations for outstanding work completed in 2020 – the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The awards ceremony was part of COMTO’s 50th Anniversary Virtual National Meeting and Training Conference.  

The three awards taken home by COMTO Jacksonville members were (Please list names below):
 

• Corporation of the Year

• HUB Firm of the Year

• Emerging Leader of the Year

Our guest speaker, the Honorable Judge Rhonda Peoples-Waters, joined us for a very dynamic discussion about her career journey, perseverance and current legal issues affecting Jacksonville. Her story is one of inspiration and courage to always strive for your goals. We appreciate Judge Rhonda Peoples-Waters for joining us on this amazing dialogue and wish her much success in her endeavors on the bench.

In this informative conversation around COVID-19, Dr. Shari Calicker educated the COMTO chapter and its guests on the importance of vaccinations, for the community and in transportation.  Dr. Calicker provided us an update on COVID-19, offered information about current approved vaccines, discussed the vaccinations impact on transportation (staff, leadership & customers) and offered some helpful tips to increase vaccination rates.

Our second guest speaker, Mrs. Greer Gillis, Vice President of System Development for the JTA. The discussion was around JTA’s efforts to protect the community and front-line employees against the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussion points focused on free rides to healthcare, COVID-19 testing for employees, pop-up discussions about how to combat the virus and the development of the “Ride-to-Health” initiative.

In this conversation, Mr. Mims discussed the importance of COMTO, what leadership looks like in the transportation industry today and his excitement to take on a new role under the Biden-Harris administration.

Brad Mims stated, “It was an honor to have been the President of the COMTO National. It helped my own leadership skills to be aggressive and vocal. Looking forward to working with the Biden administration. It is all about learning to make things run.”

Shortly after Brad Mims, Mr. Ken Middleton joined us to discuss the JTA’s recent launch of two new programs: the Local Small Business Enterprise Program and Micro LSBE Program. These programs intend to: stimulate the economy, increase the number of small businesses on JTA contracts and create additional prime contracting opportunities

This season the COMTO Jacksonville chapter was able to donate much needed supplies to our senior citizen partner community here in NE Florida. With respect to social distance guidelines, we were able to package and deliver the items but unable to personally gift them to recipients. All in all, the event was a major success with being able to give and spread much needed holiday cheer!

COMTO Week 2020 went virtual! During the week, the COMTO Jacksonville hosted three events to provide members of the chapter to express themselves by sharing words of motivation, stories about their experience as members of this organization and engaging in a “virtual” finale with one of the charter members of the chapter – Mr. Michael Blaylock, former CEO of the Jacksonville Transportation Authority. In addition to celebrating 20 years as a chapter in COMTO, we were able to raise funds for our scholarship fund! Thank you to all that supported this day and continue to support our youth in their pursuit for education and training.