Onala Atala

Onala Atala is an Associate Vice President and Systems Engineering Manager at AECOM, responsible for leading North America’s Specialty Practices Group in Safety, Security, and Systems Assurance. With over 35 years of international project management experience in transit and railway systems, they have held senior positions across various high-profile projects, including a $3 billion light rail transit project in Doha, Qatar. They previously served as Director of Systems Assurance for Taiwan High Speed Rail and Vice President at Parsons Brinckerhoff, managing major international design and construction projects. Onala possesses an MBA with Distinction in Security Management and a Master of Science in Transportation Engineering, complemented by multilingual abilities in English and Arabic. Active in industry committees, they have authored and presented over 20 papers on transit systems and project management.