Nastasha Earle-Young is the policy director for the N.C. Department of Transportation. In this role, she manages the NCDOT Resilience Program and develops policies for the department. She also serves on several national resiliency and public engagement committees.
In 2012, Earle-Young started her career at NCDOT through the department’s Transportation Engineering Associates, or TEA Program. The 18-month program gives recent engineering graduates the opportunity to learn about the major functions of the department. Earle-Young credits this program to her professional development and growth.
Earle-Young was project manager for NC Moves 2050 Plan, NCDOT’s long-range multimodal transportation plan. She worked to engage over 3 million people in 2.5 years through a very robust public engagement process. At that time, this was the most people engaged with a project at NCDOT.
Due to the successful public engagement with the plan, she has shared the process and methods on how to engage a diverse population, create new partnerships and use existing partnerships in a different way with local agencies, other states and at international conferences. The NC Moves 2050 Plan’s public engagement process was showcased at the Transportation Research Board’s 2020 Poster Session.
In her free time, Earle-Young encourages young people to go to explore careers in engineering by mentoring students as they navigate through college and transition into the workforce. She also serves on the External Advisory Alumni Board for the N.C. Agricultural and Technical State University Civil Architectural and Environmental Engineering Department.
Earle-Young graduated with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from N.C. Agricultural and Technical State University. She lives in Raleigh with her husband and two dogs.