24 Years of Transportation Funding Experience
A lifelong Californian raised in the Bay Area, Dana Lang is the transportation expert running for BART Board, with 24 years of transportation funding and policy experience.
Dana started her career in public service the Oakland Mayor’s Office under Mayor Elihu Harris, becoming a skilled grant writer. After proving her prowess at securing funding from federal, state, and regional governments, she became the Federal Grants Liaison and Grants Specialist for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), working closely with 25 Bay Area transit agencies, including BART. Six years later she began work at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SF Muni) and through advocacy and hard work earned the Outstanding Performance Recognition award from the SFMTA Board.
After becoming the Grants Unit Manager for the San Francisco Police Department, securing dozens of community safety and security grants, Dana went on to become the Small Business Affairs Officer for the San Francisco International Airport (SFO), connecting small businesses to billions of dollars of contract opportunities.
A Transit Expert and Businesswoman
For the past five years, Dana has run her own transportation consulting business and serves on two transit-related boards. For the past two years she has served on the BART Police Community Review Board, and as Vice Chair she is pleased with recent progress made in collaboration with Chief Kevin Franklin. She is also a Board Member of the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials (formerly chapter president). Twenty years ago Dana was founder of COMTO’s Transportation scholarship program which has provided $400,000 to nearly 200 minority college students seeking careers in transportation. While working as a grants professional, she has coordinated internship programs, mentored students, and worked with Cal Berkeley and COMTO to host transportation career forums for students and young professionals.
In her spare time, she is also a volunteer with the Cal Alumni Association’s Alumni Outreach Committee and Co-Chair of the Cal Berkeley African American Initiative, taking all that she’s learned to help students from modest backgrounds attain and afford a world-class education.
Dana brings the necessary real world experience, advocacy, and perseverance to help transform BART into a better system and to help others to access transportation careers.
Rooted in Community and Family
A first generation college graduate, Dana grew up in East Palo Alto, a majority African American neighborhood where public transportation service was sorely lacking, and where many depended on transit to shop or to get to work. This sparked an early interest in transportation policy and its role in fighting poverty and advancing equity and opportunity.
She was taught the meaning of service at an early age. Her father was president of St. Vincent de Paul Society, a volunteer who provided food, clothes and rent money to needy families after coming home from work at a full-time factory job, and her mother was a classroom teacher’s assistant and founding president of the East Palo Alto senior center. Under her mother’s leadership they built the community’s first senior center, and Dana later informed them that the center was among those eligible to receive funds to purchase a small bus from the Caltrans seniors and disabled grant program (FTA Section 5310 funds). Though this was a small grant program, every award had great meaning.
Dana earned a BA in Economics from Wellesley College and an MBA from UC Berkeley. She lives with her husband in Oakland. They have three adult sons.
Dana recently earned a 3rd Degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do, which has helped to maintain mind, body and focus. She is an advocate who will work to protect you.