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About STB > Board Members
The Board is authorized to have three members, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, each with a five-year term of office.
Current Members:
Acting Chairman Francis P. Mulvey
Acting Chairman Mulvey was sworn in as the eighth Member of the Surface Transportation Board on June 2, 2004 (Click here for pictures of Vice Chairman Mulvey's swearing-in ceremony). He was nominated to the Board by President George W. Bush on November 17, 2003, for a four-year term expiring on December 31, 2007. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 21, 2004. President Bush nominated Vice Chairman Mulvey to a second term of office on November 30, 2007. On December 19, 2007, the Senate confirmed the Vice Chairman's second term as a Member of the Board for a term of office ending December 31, 2012. Dr. Mulvey was designated Acting Chairman of the Board on March 12, 2009, by President Barack Obama.
Prior to joining the Board, Acting Chairman Mulvey was Staff Director, Railroad Subcommittee, and Staff Director, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials, for the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. In those positions, he was responsible for all railroad legislative matters for the Ranking Democratic Member of the Committee and served as advisor to the Ranking Member on overall transportation-policy issues.
Other positions held by the Acting Chairman were Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Rail, Transit, and Special Programs, Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Transportation; Assistant Director for Social Security and Pension Issues at the former U.S. General Accounting Office; Assistant Director for Competition, Economic and Regulatory Analyses in the Transportation Issues Area, U.S. General Accounting Office; Director of Economic Research for the New York State Legislative Commission on Solid Waste Management; Programs Manager, Transportation Research Board, at the National Academy of Sciences; and Vice President for Research at the American Bus Association.
Additionally, Acting Chairman Mulvey served as an Adjunct Faculty member at the R.H. Smith School of Business Administration at the University of Maryland. He also taught economics and statistics at Northeastern University, Wheaton College and Bowling Green State University.
The Acting Chairman holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Washington State University (1974); a B.S. in Economics from New York University (1966); and an M.A. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley (1968). Acting Chairman Mulvey and his wife, Petra, live in Maryland. They have one son, Conor, who resides in Silver Spring, MD.
Vice Chairman Charles D. “Chip” Nottingham
Charles D. Nottingham was sworn in on August 14, 2006, as a Board Member for a term ending December 31, 2010 and served as Board Chairman from August 14, 2006 to March 12, 2009. Vice Chairman Nottingham brings more than 15 years of legislative, state government, and Federal executive branch experience to his job at the Board. Since 1998, his career has been focused on finding solutions and implementing innovation in the surface transportation arena.
Vice Chairman Nottingham’s tenure as Chairman was marked by significant reforms and initiatives aimed at making the agency more accessible, transparent, and efficient. Under his leadership, the Board modernized the way it calculates the freight rail industry’s cost of capital; streamlined the large rate case process; developed practical and feasible means for freight rail customers to bring small- and medium-sized rate cases; improved the transparency of railroads’ fuel surcharge practices and declared certain fuel surcharge practices unreasonable; improved the transparency of transactions involving contractual interchange commitments, or “paper barriers;” improved the accessibility of the Board’s Rail Customer and Public Assistance Program; established the Rail Energy Transportation Advisory Committee to provide guidance on the reliable delivery of coal and liquid biofuels; and ended more than 70 years of controversial exemptions from the antitrust laws related to motor carrier industry rate bureaus.
From 2002-2006, Mr. Nottingham served as the Associate Administrator for Policy and Governmental Affairs at the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), working in the areas of policy development and analysis, legislation, Congressional affairs, highway funding and system performance analysis, and international programs. He played a leading role in developing the Administration’s surface transportation reauthorization proposal in 2002 and 2003, and in advising Congress during development and enactment of the SAFETEA-LU surface reauthorization act of 2005.
Between 1998 and 2002, Mr. Nottingham served as Assistant Secretary of Transportation and then Commonwealth Transportation Commissioner for Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore. In his capacity as Commonwealth Transportation Commissioner between 1999 and 2002, he served as the chief executive officer of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), managing more than 10,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $3 billion.
Mr. Nottingham also has served as Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Government Reform, Counsel and Chief of Staff to former Congressman Tom Davis of Virginia, and Chief of Staff to Congressman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia.
Mr. Nottingham is a licensed attorney in Virginia. He received his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and his law degree from George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia.
