Jeff Morales

Jeff Morales is an American public servant who has been the CEO of the California High Speed Rail Authority since May 29, 2012.

Morales grew up in the Washington D.C. area. His father George, a Mexican immigrant, was an anesthesiologist at the George Washington University Hospital and was part of the trauma team that treated and saved President Ronald Reagan after a 1981 assassination attempt.

After attending Churchill High School in Potomac, Morales enrolled at George Washington University as a biology major. He planned on becoming a marine biologist.

Morales' first job out of college was as an aide to U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg. He initially focused on environmental issues before becoming a transportation specialist when Lautenberg was named chairman of the Senate transit appropriations subcommittee. Morales was a key drafter of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, a bill which first proposed a California high-speed rail corridor connecting San Diego and Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento through the San Joaquin Valley.

In 1993, Morales was appointed as special assistant to Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena. In 1995, Morales began work with Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Task Review. Gore would praise Morales' work two years later when the latter left Washington: "[Jeff] has been an important part of our work to reinvent the federal government". He also served as issues director for the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. He was part of a team that wrote the bill outlawing smoking on planes.

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