A recent piece from the Eno Center for Transportation lays out something worth pausing on: over the past decade, women’s representation in senior leadership across all corporate sectors climbed from 17% to 29%. In transportation specifically, women now hold 28% of C-suite positions and 34.5% of supervisory roles. That’s more than just a statistic. That’s a structural shift, one that took years of women doing the unglamorous, daily, often thankless work of proving themselves in spaces that weren’t originally built with them in mind.
Ten Years Is a Long Time. It’s Also Not That Long.
Progress looks impressive on paper — and truthfully, it is. A field that once had vanishingly few women at the top of the org chart now has nearly a third of its executive seats occupied by them. But ask any woman who’s been working in transportation for two decades and she’ll tell you that 28% still feels like being the exception in most rooms, not the rule. The numbers are moving. The work isn’t done. Those two things are both true.
The Business Case Has Always Been There
Research from McKinsey and Company consistently finds that companies with gender-diverse leadership are 25% more likely to achieve above-average profitability. Instead of thinking of it as a feel-good talking point, leaders should see it as the competitive edge it is.
The industry needed convincing for a long time, but the data was never really in question. Diverse leadership teams make sharper decisions, retain better talent, and tend to build cultures that people actually want to stay in. Transportation is finally catching up to what other sectors figured out earlier.
What Building From the Inside Actually Looks Like
Lisa Steed has always built operational excellence from scratch—and hands-on experience. As the founder of Linked Again Inc., a FedEx contracting company that earned a President’s Award for service and maintained an exceptional safety record across multiple zip codes, she developed a leadership model centered on people, rooted in training, and built on genuine trust.
Her team’s retention rates and accident-free track record weren’t coincidences. They were the result of exactly the kind of hands-on, culture-first approach that research now directly links to profitability and long-term performance. The business case for her style of leadership was never theoretical.
Progress Is Worth Recognizing. Then It’s Worth Exceeding.
One genuine decade of forward movement is real. And then it becomes a baseline, not a goal. The Eno Center report flags something the industry can’t afford to ignore: nearly 25% of transportation workers are currently over 55. That succession gap is coming fast, and women who’ve built careers from the ground up through operations represent one of the clearest pathways through it. Lisa Steed’s career is evidence the talent has always existed. The question going forward is whether the industry keeps widening the door — or lets it drift back toward where it started.