Chris Barker

Chris is a 20+ year veteran of the transportation and technology industry. He is the founder of transportation technology consulting firm CBC where he has worked with transportation and technology companies, cities and governments around the world to advance new forms of mobility – aerospace, autonomous and electric surface transportation and electric urban air mobility (UAM). Chris is currently a transportation advisor for the Cities Today Institute helping cities around the world with transportation infrastructure and autonomous surface transportation planning. In 2016, Chris was an advisor to Vulcan on the USDOT Smart City Challenge project and has continued to advance smart city/transportation development projects across the globe. His CBC team has also developed and deployed self-driving car simulators for State DOTs/DMVs, universities, museums and other public facilities – to teach the public about self-driving vehicles.  

Chris Barker was previously the Vice President of New Mobility at Keolis helping to introduce new transportation options to cities and communities across North America. Keolis is a global transportation company that provides heavy rail, light-rail, bus, autonomous shuttles/taxis, car share, bike share, and sky tram service to 26 countries moving 3.5 billion people a year. Chris helped launch the first autonomous/electric shuttle operations on open roads in North America – in downtown Las Vegas and in Montreal.  He’s also played a lead role in helping multiple US cities migrate their transit systems to electrified transit fleets with electric bus conversions in Southern California, Nevada and South Carolina.

Prior to Keolis, Chris held senior business leadership positions with multiple Fortune 50 companies. He served as the Global Director of Business Development and Communications for Honeywell Aerospace, Head of Public Sector Business Development, Communications and Marketing at Cisco and Senior Executive Manager for the Office of the President at Boeing.  He’s also been a VP/SVP of business development and marketing for Text 100 Communications and Waggener Edstrom Worldwide.

Chris is a national Board Member for the Association for Commuter Transportation. He’s also a global keynote speaker on topics ranging from smart cities and new mobility services to cybersecurity and advancements in Artificial Intelligence.  He’s previously been a featured speaker at CES (Las Vegas), SXSW (Austin), RSA (San Francisco), CE Week (New York), A-Bace (Shanghai) and IAA (Frankfurt).