Sharon Kershbaum currently serves as the Director of the District Department of Transportation (DDOT). Sharon is an experienced transformational leader and has held executive roles within local, state, and federal governments as well as the private and not-for-profit sectors. With an emphasis on change management and improving operational efficiencies of organizations, Sharon is credited with establishing a cross functional team at DDOT positioned to strategically address roadway safety efforts, improving public engagement, as well as directing an agency-wide realignment to better support agency priorities, right-size division portfolios, and build achievable career paths. Prior to joining DDOT, Sharon served as Chief Operating Officer in the District’s Department of Human Services and as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Management and Budget at the United States Department of the Treasury. In both roles Sharon developed processes to capture and use data to support agency operations, improve transparency and accountability, and leverage employee feedback to optimize performance.
Sharon’s zeal for data-based and people-focused management was fostered early in her career with leadership roles in the Office of the City Administrator where she helped establish the “CapStat” agency performance management program. “CapStat” serves as a deep dive into high-profile matters and/or critical service delivery to research best practices and synthesize complex data to support more informed decision making. In senior leadership roles at Fannie Mae and the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Budget and Program Evaluation, Sharon led strategic planning, audit and remediation plans, and oversaw special projects to reduce costs and improve organization performance. In one of her earliest roles, Sharon served as Executive Director of Operation Understanding, a cross cultural leadership development program for Jewish and African-American high-school students, a position that built the foundation of her career in service-oriented executive leadership.
Sharon is recognized as a leader who creates synergy between an organization’s mission and its workforce—a connection that attracts and retains the best people and teams to do their best work. Sharon was recently named the Cities Today Institute President, North America (Mobility). Sharon has served as a Fellow with the National Academy of Public Administration since 2016.
A Ward 3 resident, Sharon received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Business Administration from the University of Pennsylvania.