Gail Murray

Transportation Visionary, Twice-Over Mayor & BART Board President — Three Decades of Moving Communities Forward

"What's it like to face the public, make a decision that doesn't please everyone, and end with an accomplishment that betters the world around you? That's governing."

🚊 Gail Murray
Walnut Creek City Council & BART Board
35+ Years Elected Public Service
2× Mayor of Walnut Creek
12 Years on BART Board
420K Daily BART Riders Served
1,800 Acres Open Space Preserved

Early Life & Context

Gail Murray's path to elected office ran not through political ambition but through something rarer: deep professional expertise in the very systems she would later be entrusted to govern. Her early life set a template — develop mastery first, then bring that mastery into the public arena.

Gail Murray holds a degree from Harvard University — a credential listed proudly among her professional memberships through the Harvard Alumni Association — alongside decades of hands-on transportation expertise that she built not in lecture halls but in the operational trenches of Bay Area transit agencies. Her professional life before elected office was a sustained education in how public transportation actually works: how buses get scheduled, how paratransit serves elderly and disabled riders, how commute behavior can be reshaped by smart policy, and how the gap between a planner's vision and a community's daily reality can be bridged, or widened, by the decisions made in government.

In 1970, Gail and her husband Jim moved to the Woodlands neighborhood of Walnut Creek, drawn by what she later described as "the attractiveness of Walnut Creek and the knowledge that BART would soon be serving the city." That dual attraction — to community quality and to transportation access — captures something essential about her perspective. She arrived in the East Bay not as a passive resident but as someone already attuned to the relationship between mobility and civic life. She understood from her first day in the Woodlands that where transit goes, communities follow.

Even before she entered elective politics, the context of the early 1970s shaped her engagement. Walnut Creek was growing rapidly, suburban development was accelerating throughout central Contra Costa County, and BART was transforming from a visionary blueprint into an operating system. Women were beginning to move into civic and professional roles that had been almost entirely male-dominated — and Gail Murray positioned herself, methodically and deliberately, at the intersection of both shifts. Her career in public transportation management — at AC Transit, at UC Berkeley, at Bay Area Transportation Corporation — gave her a depth of technical and organizational knowledge that most elected officials simply do not possess when they take office.

The Professional Foundation That Changed Everything

As Acting Director of Transportation at UC Berkeley, Murray created Berkeley TRiP — the first Commute Store in the nation — and staffed a 20-member Policy Steering Committee to reshape how the university community moved through the city. The innovation was not just programmatic but conceptual: it demonstrated that a well-designed, accessible information hub could change commute behavior at scale. This was the kind of systems-level thinking she would bring to every elected position she held, from the Walnut Creek City Council to the BART board, turning theory into policy and policy into pavement.

Her entry into neighborhood politics — elected to the Woodlands Homeowners' Association Board in 1972, serving as president in 1974 — was the first proving ground for a pattern that would repeat throughout her career. She did not wait to be invited into leadership. She identified problems in her immediate community (too many service stations at a key intersection, a residential street being used as a commuter shortcut, open space that needed bond funding to be protected), brought the same analytical rigor she used professionally, and turned local grievances into local solutions. By the time she ran for the Walnut Creek City Council in 1981, she had already spent nearly a decade learning governance from the neighborhood up.

Leadership Journey

Gail Murray's evolution from a new Walnut Creek resident to a figure who shaped public policy for hundreds of thousands of Bay Area commuters unfolded in four distinct and deliberate phases — each one building on the technical mastery and civic credibility of the last.

1

Neighborhood Advocate

Beginning with the Woodlands Homeowners' Association in 1972, Murray learned the fundamental tools of civic engagement: how to build a coalition, how to make the case to reluctant decision-makers, and how to turn a community concern into a policy change. Her early campaigns — preventing a residential street from becoming a commuter cut-through, lobbying the City Council to limit service stations at a busy intersection, and championing the bond measure that established Lime Ridge Open Space — proved that local knowledge and persistent advocacy could move institutions.

2

From Commissions to the Council

Murray did not leap from neighborhood activist to elected official. She served on Walnut Creek's Transportation Commission and then its Planning Commission — chaired both — earning a reputation as a technically sophisticated thinker who could navigate the complex intersection of land use, traffic, and community character that defined Walnut Creek's growth debates in the late 1970s and early 1980s. When a council vacancy arose in 1981, she had already been doing council-level work for years. She was appointed to fill the vacancy, then won election in her own right twice — and was twice chosen by colleagues to serve as Mayor.

3

Leading Through Controversy

The decade from 1981 to 1991 was among the most turbulent in Walnut Creek's modern history — suburban growth pressures, battles over development density and traffic, the construction of a major regional arts center, and the ongoing negotiation of a city's identity in a rapidly changing county. Murray navigated all of it: presiding over the dedication of the Lesher Regional Center for the Arts, leading the effort to put 1,800 acres of open space before voters, and participating in the consortium that successfully lobbied Caltrans to rebuild the I-680/Highway 24 interchange. These were not consensus achievements — they required exactly the kind of leadership she would later write about: facing the public, making unpopular decisions, and producing outcomes that bettered the community.

4

Scaling Up to Regional Power

In 2004, Murray ran for the BART Board of Directors representing District 1 — the Contra Costa district encompassing Walnut Creek, Concord, Pleasant Hill, Orinda, Lafayette, Moraga, Clayton, and half of Danville. She won, and then won again, and again, serving three full terms through 2016. Along the way she was elected Vice President of the BART Board (2006) and twice served as Board President (including 2008) — presiding over crises, expansions, labor disputes, and the existential challenges facing a transit system serving over 420,000 daily riders. She brought to the regional stage exactly what she had developed at the local one: deep expertise, institutional patience, and the willingness to make decisions in public and own the consequences.

Career Timeline

From a Woodlands neighborhood board in 1972 to the presidency of one of the nation's largest commuter rail systems, Gail Murray's career spans more than four decades of elected and appointed public service in Contra Costa County and across the Bay Area. Her timeline is a study in how expertise, patience, and civic courage compound across a career devoted to making communities move — and move well.

1972
MOVEMENT

Elected to Woodlands Homeowners' Association Board

Gail Murray and her husband Jim, having moved to Walnut Creek's Woodlands neighborhood in 1970 drawn by both the city's character and the promise of BART service, begins her civic career by winning election to the Woodlands Homeowners' Association Board, serving as president by 1974. In this first arena, she demonstrates the direct-action style that will define her career: she successfully lobbies the Walnut Creek City Council to limit the number of service stations at the Oak Grove and Ygnacio Valley intersection, prevents Citrus Street from becoming a commuter shortcut by prohibiting a right turn onto Treat Boulevard, and spearheads advocacy for the bond measure that establishes Lime Ridge Open Space — protecting land to the east of the Woodlands from development pressure. These are not small achievements for a newcomer to civic life; they are proof of concept.

1977
INNOVATION

Creates the Nation's First Commute Store at UC Berkeley

As Acting Director of Transportation at the University of California, Berkeley, Murray conceives and creates Berkeley TRiP — the first Commute Store in the nation, a one-stop information and resource hub designed to reshape how the university community makes transportation choices. She staffs and chairs a 20-member Policy Steering Committee to guide the initiative, demonstrating an early command of multi-stakeholder governance that presages her later board work. The Commute Store model — making sustainable transportation alternatives as accessible and user-friendly as driving — becomes a template for commute programs across the country. Murray also serves as Acting Assistant General Manager of Service Development and Marketing at AC Transit in Oakland, managing budgeting, planning, public information, paratransit, and customer services for one of the Bay Area's primary transit agencies.

1981
POSITION

Appointed to Walnut Creek City Council

After chairing both the Walnut Creek Planning Commission and Transportation Commission — demonstrating the dual expertise that made her appointment almost self-evident — Gail Murray is appointed to fill a vacancy on the City Council in 1981. Her arrival coincides with one of the most consequential periods in Walnut Creek's modern development: rapid suburban growth, pressure on infrastructure, a city wrestling with its own identity as a regional center. She brings to the council something few colleagues possess: not political theory but operational mastery of the transportation, planning, and land-use systems that determine how a city actually functions day to day.

1982
POSITION

Elected to City Council; Begins Decade of Civic Leadership

Elected to the Walnut Creek City Council in her own right in 1982, Murray wins a second term after that, serving through 1991 — a full decade of elected leadership that encompasses ten years of battles over growth control, the construction and dedication of the $21 million Regional Center for the Arts (later renamed the Lesher Center for the Arts), a voter-approved open space acquisition of 1,800 acres, and successful lobbying to rebuild the I-680/Highway 24 interchange in partnership with Caltrans. She chairs the Central Contra Costa Transit Authority continuously from 1982 to 1991, building a fixed-route and paratransit system that grows to serve a 200-square-mile area. She is elected Mayor of Walnut Creek twice during this period, presiding over some of the city's most transformative decisions.

1990
CAMPAIGN

Dedicates the Lesher Regional Center for the Arts

As Mayor of Walnut Creek, Gail Murray presides over the dedication of the $21 million Regional Center for the Arts — a landmark cultural institution that opened on the same site where 15 years of planning and fundraising had been invested, featuring a performance by Bob Hope and Joel Grey on opening night. The Center, later renamed the Lesher Center for the Arts in honor of Contra Costa Times publisher Dean S. Lesher — the first major private donor — transforms Walnut Creek's downtown and establishes the city as the cultural anchor of central Contra Costa County. For Murray, the dedication represents the fulfillment of the most visible civic project of her council tenure: proof that a community could invest in arts infrastructure and emerge, years later, with something extraordinary.

1991
CAMPAIGN

Voters Approve 1,800-Acre Open Space Acquisition

Among the defining accomplishments of Murray's decade on the Walnut Creek City Council is convincing voters to approve the purchase of 1,800 acres of open space — a bold commitment of public resources to landscape preservation in the face of relentless suburban development pressure across central Contra Costa County. The acquisition, which she would later describe in her forthcoming book as a "grassroots battle for open space," required sustained public education, coalition-building, and the kind of political courage required to spend public money on land that, to development interests, represented untapped opportunity. The result is a lasting green buffer in one of the Bay Area's most densely suburbanized corridors.

2004
POSITION

Elected to BART Board of Directors, District 1

After more than a decade of consulting and research work in transportation policy — including authoring multiple National Academy of Sciences Transportation Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) reports on car-sharing, rural transit, welfare-to-work transportation, and mobility management — Gail Murray runs for the BART Board of Directors in November 2004 and wins. She represents District 1, encompassing Walnut Creek, Concord, Clayton, Pleasant Hill, Orinda, Moraga, Lafayette, and half of Danville — the heart of suburban Contra Costa County and the communities most dependent on BART as a commute lifeline. Pre-pandemic, BART was carrying an average of 420,000 daily passenger trips across 50 stations and 104 miles of track. She also represents BART on the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Agency, linking commuter rail to intercity rail planning.

2006
POSITION

Elected BART Board Vice President

In December 2006, the BART Board of Directors unanimously elects two women to lead the agency — Board President Lynette Sweet and Vice President Gail Murray — in a historic vote that places women in both of BART's most powerful governing positions simultaneously. At the Board meeting, Murray states her governing philosophy directly: "My goals are to support the Board and the organization and especially the riders and taxpayers of the BART District." The election represents a watershed moment for regional transit governance in the Bay Area, combining Murray's deep Contra Costa County roots and transportation expertise with a renewed institutional commitment to diversity and rider-centered leadership.

2008
POSITION

Elected President of the BART Board of Directors

Gail Murray is elected President of the BART Board of Directors for 2008, taking the helm of one of the nation's largest and most complex commuter rail systems at a moment of acute challenge: a global financial crisis, ongoing labor negotiations, and the beginning of planning work for the eBART East Contra Costa extension that would eventually bring BART service to Antioch. As Board President, she presides over complex multi-stakeholder governance involving 3,100 BART employees, federal funding streams, labor contracts, capital projects, and the daily operational realities of a system moving hundreds of thousands of riders across four Bay Area counties. Her Woodlands neighbors celebrate her election in their community newsletter, recalling her decades of civic service since arriving in Walnut Creek in 1970.

2009
CAMPAIGN

Navigates BART Through the Oscar Grant Crisis

In the early morning hours of January 1, 2009, BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant, an unarmed Black man, on the platform of the Fruitvale BART Station in Oakland. The incident, captured on video and widely circulated, ignited a firestorm of public outrage, protest, and demands for accountability that tested BART's governance at every level. As a senior board member and former board president, Murray was part of the institutional response to one of the most consequential crises in BART's history — a crisis she would later analyze in depth in her forthcoming book, Lessons from the Hot Seat, examining how elected officials can and should handle a moment when an institution must confront its own failures publicly, transparently, and with accountability to the communities most harmed.

2016
RECOGNITION

Wins Third Term; Retires After 12 Years of BART Service

In November 2016, Gail Murray — running as a three-term incumbent — defeats challenger Debora Allen in the BART District 1 election with more than 64 percent of the vote, a commanding margin that testifies to the depth of trust she has built across central Contra Costa County over 12 years. Having served through the Oscar Grant crisis, major labor strikes, the planning and approval of the eBART East Contra Costa extension to Antioch (opening 2018), and the broader challenge of positioning BART for a mid-21st-century Bay Area, she chooses not to seek a fourth term, concluding a 35-year career in elected public service. She returns to her research and consulting practice, and begins work on her forthcoming book documenting the case studies of governance she accumulated across four decades at the hot seat.

Stories of Impact

Three moments that reveal how Gail Murray's combination of technical mastery and civic courage produced outcomes that transformed Walnut Creek's cultural and physical landscape and shaped the Bay Area's transit future.

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1975 — 1990

Building the Lesher Center: 15 Years from Vision to Opening Night

Long before a single beam was raised, the Regional Center for the Arts — later the Lesher Center for the Arts — was a civic idea that had to be fought for, funded, planned, replanned, and defended against skepticism over fifteen years of contested groundwork. The story of its construction is the story of what sustained civic commitment looks like when it plays out across the full span of a decade and a half of competing priorities, shifting political landscapes, and the constant pressure of a suburban community asking whether a $21 million performing arts center was really what it needed.

By the time Gail Murray took her seat on the Walnut Creek City Council in 1981, the arts center project was already years in the making — and years from completion. What it needed in its final decade of development was exactly what Murray brought: the administrative sophistication of someone who had managed organizational budgets and multi-member steering committees, the political credibility of an elected official who chaired two city commissions, and the conviction that a city of Walnut Creek's aspiration deserved world-class cultural infrastructure.

As Mayor, Murray presided over the dedication ceremony in 1990 — an opening night featuring Bob Hope and Joel Grey that announced to the region that Walnut Creek had arrived as a cultural capital. Dean S. Lesher, the Contra Costa Times publisher who made the first major private donation, would later lend his name to the center when it was renamed in 1995. Today, the Lesher Center for the Arts draws hundreds of thousands of annual visitors, anchors Walnut Creek's downtown economy, and serves as the most visible symbol of the civic ambition that Murray and her colleagues sustained across one of Walnut Creek's most consequential decades.

Impact & Legacy

The Lesher Center for the Arts remains one of the Bay Area's premier regional performing arts venues, hosting the Center Repertory Company and dozens of touring productions annually. It transformed Walnut Creek's downtown identity and established a model — arts infrastructure as civic investment — that continues to shape the city's character and economy more than three decades after opening night.

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1981 — 1991

The Grassroots Battle for 1,800 Acres of Open Space

Walnut Creek in the 1980s was a city under pressure. The suburban expansion that had transformed central Contra Costa County since the 1950s had not stopped at city limits — it pressed against hillsides, filled creek corridors, and consumed open land that had seemed permanent until, suddenly, it was not. For the residents of neighborhoods like the Woodlands, who could see the ridgelines from their backyards, the question of open space was not abstract: it was the daily view from the kitchen window, and it was disappearing.

Gail Murray had been fighting this battle since before she was elected — her early advocacy for the Lime Ridge Open Space bond measure as a Woodlands neighborhood activist was the precursor to the larger civic campaign she would lead as a council member. The challenge on the council was different: it required convincing a majority of colleagues, then crafting a ballot measure compelling enough to win public support, then managing the political opposition from development interests who saw in every unprotected acre a potential project. The battle, as Murray later called it, was genuinely grassroots — it required the kind of sustained public education and coalition-building that cannot be manufactured by a single elected official.

When voters approved the acquisition of 1,800 acres of open space, they were ratifying not just a land purchase but a philosophy: that the quality of life in a rapidly growing suburb depends on what you choose not to build as much as on what you choose to build. That philosophy, championed by Murray across her decade on the council, is visible today in the preserved hillsides and trail networks that remain one of Walnut Creek's most distinctive features.

Impact & Legacy

The open space acquisitions championed during Murray's council tenure — including lands that connect to Lime Ridge Open Space's current 1,226 acres and 25 miles of trails — provide a permanent green infrastructure for one of the Bay Area's most densely urbanized counties, protecting watershed, wildlife habitat, and public recreation access for generations of Walnut Creek residents.

2009 — 2016

Governing From the Hot Seat: Crisis, Accountability & the Work of Regional Leadership

The shooting of Oscar Grant on New Year's Day 2009 was the kind of crisis that reveals everything about the character of an institution and its leadership. BART — the transit system that Gail Murray helped govern as a board member and former president — was thrust into the center of a national conversation about police accountability, racial justice, and the obligations of public agencies to the communities they serve. The subsequent protests that periodically shut down BART service added operational crisis to institutional crisis, demanding a response that was simultaneously transparent, accountable, operationally sound, and respectful of the profound grief and anger of Oakland's Black community.

Murray's approach to this and other BART crises — labor strikes that crippled the system, the complex multi-year planning process for the eBART East Contra Costa extension to Antioch, and the ongoing challenge of managing a 3,100-employee organization under public scrutiny — is the subject of her forthcoming book, Lessons from the Hot Seat: Governing at the Local and Regional Level. The book draws on four decades of case studies from both Walnut Creek and BART to address the central challenge of democratic governance: how do you make a decision that doesn't please everyone and still end with something that betters the world?

Her chapter on the Oscar Grant crisis sits alongside chapters on suburban growth wars, disability access battles (including the "Rolling Quads" campaign for transit accessibility), labor negotiations, and the politics of extending transit into underserved communities. Together, they constitute a practitioner's guide to public leadership that could only be written by someone who spent 35 years in the room where those decisions were made — not as a commentator or academic, but as the elected official who had to stand before the public and own both the mistakes and the achievements.

Impact & Legacy

Murray's forthcoming book, Lessons from the Hot Seat, will bring her four decades of public service experience to a new generation of civic leaders, offering case studies in crisis management, community conflict, and the construction of lasting public goods — drawing directly on her record in Walnut Creek and at BART as one of the region's most experienced elected transportation officials.

Major Achievements

Across four decades of elected public service, Gail Murray leaves behind four categories of lasting accomplishment — each one the product of years of technical preparation, political patience, and the willingness to lead from the front in moments when the right answer was neither easy nor popular.

🏛️

Walnut Creek's Cultural Transformation

As a City Council member and twice-elected Mayor, Gail Murray helped guide Walnut Creek through fifteen years of planning and fundraising to deliver the $21 million Regional Center for the Arts — presiding over its 1990 opening as Mayor in a ceremony that announced Walnut Creek's arrival as the cultural capital of central Contra Costa County. The center, renamed the Lesher Center for the Arts in 1995, draws hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, anchors the city's downtown economy, and stands as the most visible monument to the civic ambition sustained by Murray and her colleagues through a decade of contested decisions. She was also a founding member and trustee of the Diablo Regional Arts Association, deepening her institutional commitment to the arts infrastructure she helped build.

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Open Space Preservation & Smart Growth

During her decade on the Walnut Creek City Council, Murray championed the voter-approved purchase of 1,800 acres of open space — one of the most significant land preservation decisions in Walnut Creek's modern history — while simultaneously navigating ten years of contentious suburban growth control battles. Her early advocacy for the Lime Ridge Open Space bond measure (before she was even elected to the council) established her environmental credentials; her council leadership turned that commitment into protected land. She also helped lead the consortium that successfully lobbied Caltrans to rebuild the critical I-680/Highway 24 interchange, addressing the infrastructure bottleneck that had defined central Contra Costa County's growth constraints for a generation.

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Regional Transit Leadership at BART

Elected to three consecutive terms on the BART Board of Directors (2004–2016), Gail Murray served as Vice President (2006) and Board President (2008), helping govern a system serving 420,000 daily riders across 50 stations and 104 miles of track. She represented BART on the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Agency, participated in the planning process for the eBART East Contra Costa extension to Antioch (opened 2018), and presided over the board's institutional response to the Oscar Grant crisis — one of the most consequential moments in BART's operational and civil rights history. Throughout her tenure, she carried to the regional board the same transportation expertise she had accumulated across twenty years of professional practice, including six published National Academy of Sciences research reports on transit policy.

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Transportation Research & Knowledge Sharing

Parallel to her elected career, Gail Murray maintained an active career as one of the Bay Area's most prolific transportation policy researchers. As a Research Associate with the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University and a certified Disadvantaged Business Enterprise consultant, she authored or co-authored six Transportation Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) reports published by the National Academy of Sciences — covering car-sharing, college transit systems, rural community transportation, welfare-to-work mobility, and human services coordination. She developed and taught a course on transportation planning at UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies and is completing a book, Lessons from the Hot Seat, that translates her four decades of governing experience into a practitioner's guide for the next generation of civic leaders.

In Their Own Words

Gail Murray on governing, on transportation, on the challenge of making decisions that don't please everyone — and on the responsibility of public service to produce something that genuinely betters the world.

"What's it like to face the public, make a decision that doesn't please everyone, and end with an accomplishment that betters the world around you? I've tackled that situation as an elected member of the Walnut Creek City Council in Northern California and of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Board."

"Among the stories in this book, you'll learn how Walnut Creek faced ten years of battles about growth control, built the Regional Center for the Arts, and convinced the voters to buy 1,800 acres of open space. The case studies featuring BART include how we handled the police shooting of a Black man on the train platform, the path we took to extend service 10 miles further east, and how BART resolved its labor strikes. The stories in this book can help others in public service improve their own communities."

"My goals are to support the Board and the organization and especially the riders and taxpayers of the BART District."

"I've been a Woodlands resident since 1970, drawn by the attractiveness of Walnut Creek and the knowledge that BART would soon be serving the city. From that very beginning, I understood that where transit goes, community quality follows — and that the decisions made by elected officials about land use, transportation, and public investment ripple outward for decades in ways that no single person can fully anticipate."

— Gail Murray, Mayor of Walnut Creek (1982–1991) & BART Board Director, District 1 (2004–2016)

Legacy & Ripple Effects

Gail Murray's public life produced institutions, infrastructure, and policy frameworks that will shape Contra Costa County and the Bay Area for generations — a legacy as tangible as a performing arts center, as vast as 1,800 acres of open hillside, and as daily as a BART commute.

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The Lesher Center for the Arts

The performing arts center that Murray helped bring to fruition as Mayor now attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, anchors Walnut Creek's identity as the cultural hub of central Contra Costa County, and supports a thriving downtown economy. It is the most visited cultural institution in the county and a direct product of the civic commitment sustained through fifteen years of planning — years that included Murray's leadership on the council.

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Preserved Open Space

The 1,800 acres of open space acquired through voter-approved bond measures during Murray's council tenure — connected to Lime Ridge Open Space's 1,226 acres and 25 miles of public trails — stand as a permanent green infrastructure protecting watershed, wildlife habitat, and recreational access in one of the Bay Area's most urbanized counties. Every hiker, cyclist, and family on those trails today benefits from the political courage it took to put that land purchase before voters.

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eBART East Contra Costa Extension

Murray's participation in the BART Board's planning and approval process for the eBART East Contra Costa extension — which opened in 2018, connecting Bay Point to Antioch — helped bring BART service to one of the county's most underserved corridors. The extension reflects the long-arc planning work of the board across multiple terms, work to which Murray contributed 12 years of transit expertise and institutional knowledge as District 1 Director.

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Lessons from the Hot Seat

Murray's forthcoming book, drawing on four decades of case studies from Walnut Creek and BART, will create a permanent record of how one civic leader navigated some of the most consequential local and regional governance challenges of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It is designed explicitly to help future public servants — offering not theory but lived experience, not prescriptions but hard-won perspectives on the art of governing well under pressure.

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National Transportation Research

Six TCRP reports published through the National Academy of Sciences, a teaching position at UC Berkeley, and ongoing consulting work through the Mineta Transportation Institute ensure that Gail Murray's expertise continues to shape how transportation professionals across the country approach car-sharing, rural mobility, welfare-to-work access, and human services coordination. The Berkeley TRiP Commute Store she created in the 1970s was the first of its kind in the nation — a model that has been replicated in dozens of cities.

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A Model of Expert Civic Leadership

Gail Murray's career — from Woodlands neighborhood board to Harvard alumna to BART Board President — demonstrates what is possible when professional expertise and civic commitment combine in a single leader over four decades. She represents a model of service in which deep mastery of the systems one governs produces better outcomes for the communities one serves: Walnut Creek's transformed downtown, its preserved hillsides, and a BART system strengthened through some of its most turbulent years are the evidence.

"What's it like to face the public, make a decision that doesn't please everyone, and end with an accomplishment that betters the world around you? The stories in this work can help others in public service improve their own communities — because governing well is not a mystery. It is a practice, and it can be learned."

— Gail Murray, Mayor of Walnut Creek & BART Board President