Multi-Modal Transportation Panel Discussion Presented with Clinton School Tuesday, Jan. 24

Multi-Modal Transportation in Central Arkansas

Tuesday, Jan. 24, 5:30-7 p.m.
Clinton School of Public Service
The University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service and Rock Region METRO present Multi-Modal Transportation in Central Arkansas, a panel discussion and town hall meeting.

Multi-modal transportation is in demand across the country, including here in The Natural State. Especially in light of the 30 Crossing project, a new TIGER grant for the Little Rock Port Authority and a recent push for a dedicated funding source for Rock Region METRO, addressing evolving regional and state transportation needs is a key area of focus for central Arkansas. Multi-Modal Transportation in Central Arkansas features a panel discussion and town hall meeting on multi-modal transportation and associated concepts, including public transit, complete streets, accessibility, and cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. Panelists include Arthur “Art” Guzzetti, vice president of policy for the American Public Transportation Association; Rex Nelson, senior vice president and director of corporate communications for Simmons First National Corp.; Antwan Phillips, associate attorney for Wright Lindsey Jennings; Rep. Warwick Sabin (D-Little Rock); and moderator Pamela Smith, communications director for the Little Rock School District. The forum is free and open to the public. Learn what transportation options central Arkansans want to see in our community and what actions they would like to see from community leaders to help move their vision forward.

Art Guzzetti, vice president-policy for the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), is a 32-year veteran of public transportation at the local, state, and national levels.
Among other things, Guzzetti is responsible for APTA’s extensive policy research agenda, policy analysis and development, transportation information, and statistics. He and the APTA team work with the legislative and executive branches of all levels of government and with other national associations, think tanks, and interest groups to cultivate the ideas, relationships, and advocacy initiatives that will propel public transportation forward.
Prior to coming to APTA in June 1997, Guzzetti spent 16 years in management at two of the nation’s leading public transportation systems—New Jersey Transit Corporation and Pittsburgh’s Port Authority of Allegheny County—along with two years at New Jersey DOT. His duties focused on transportation policy, government affairs, capital programming, grants development, and grants management and advocacy. In short, the focus of his career has been on generating support for public transportation and the benefits it provides to communities and regions.
Guzzetti has a political science degree from Edinboro State University and a master of public administration from the University of Pittsburgh.

Mr. Rex Nelson serves as Senior Vice President and Director of Corporate Communications at Simmons First National Bank. Mr. Nelson has been Senior Vice President and Director of Corporate Communications at Simmons First National Corporation since May 2015. Mr. Nelson has served as President of AICU since January 2011. He served as the Senior Vice President for government relations and public outreach at The Communications Group. He served at senior levels of state and federal governments. He is viewed as an expert on Arkansas history, Southern culture and Southern politics and has appeared on radio and television stations across the country. He writes a weekly column for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; and his feature stories regularly appear in magazines such as Arkansas Life and Talk Business & Politics. He was president of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame Foundation and was the longtime chairman of the board of the Oxford American literary quarterly. He is the board chairman of Connect Arkansas, the chairman of the Political Animals Club of Little Rock, the vice president of the board of the Arkansas Travelers Baseball Club Inc., the vice president of the Little Rock Touchdown Club and a member of the Arkansas Humanities Council, the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council and the advisory board of the Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History. In 2005, he was named as one of two appointees of President to the Delta Regional Authority, a regional planning and economic development agency. He served in the full-time position for four years. He has served as the radio voice for the Ouachita football team for three decades at Ouachita Baptist University. He is a summa cum laude graduate of Ouachita Baptist University.

Antwan Phillips

Professional Experience
Antwan Phillips has a trial-oriented practice in the areas of insurance defense, (including personal injury defense, premises liability, products liability, professional liability, dental malpractice and trucking litigation). Phillips also represents corporate clients in the areas of transportation defense (including lemon law and Magnuson-Moss claims) and municipal finance.

Recognition
In 2013, Arkansas Business included Phillips in the annual “20 in their 20s.” Mid-South Super Lawyers has recognized him as a “Rising Star” in the area of Civil Litigation Defense since 2014.
In 2012, Phillips attended the ABOTA National Trial College held at Harvard Law School in Boston, MA. After completing intensive trial training from members of the bench and from accomplished practitioners across the nation, Phillips graduated as a Fellow of the American Board of Trial Advocates Trial College.

Community Involvement
Phillips is an alumnus of the Arkansas Commitment program and is the current President of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arkansas Board of Directors. He is also the President of the Public Education Foundation of Little Rock and a member of the Stakeholders Committee as appointed by the State Board of Education. Phillips also serves as a co-chair for the Think Big think thank which is a year-long strategic assessment and implementation process aimed at improving Little Rock’s overall quality of place and making it a community in which young professionals will want to live and work. In addition, he previously served as an adjunct professor at the Bowen School of Law, where he taught a course on Sports Law.

Warwick Sabin is the State Representative for District 33, which includes the Hillcrest, Leawood, Briarwood, Hall High, Capitol View/Stifft Station, and Downtown neighborhoods of Little Rock. He holds the position of Assistant Speaker Pro-Tempore for the 90th General Assembly and was elected Chair of the 41-member bi-partisan Freshmen Caucus for the 89th General Assembly. Both Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist John Brummett as well as Talk Business Quarterly named Warwick among the top ten legislators of the 2013 legislative session, and the Arkansas Times called him the “Freshman of the session”.

In 2014, he was among 24 national political leaders awarded the Rodel Fellowship by the Aspen Institute for his “outstanding ability to work responsibly across partisan divisions and bring greater civility to public discourse.”
Warwick is Senior Director, U.S. Programs at Winrock International. He graduated as valedictorian with a B.A. (summa cum laude) in Political Science from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where he served as President of the Young Democrats before being elected President of the student body. During his tenure, Warwick led a successful campaign to have all schools in the University of Arkansas System officially celebrate the federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

While in college, Warwick was awarded the Harry S. Truman Scholarship and was named to the USA Today Academic All-Star Team. He also won the Marshall Scholarship for study at the University of Oxford. While in England, Warwick was the speechwriter to U.S. Ambassador Philip Lader. He also was an intern at Foreign Affairs magazine and left Oxford with an M.A. (Oxon) in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Warwick went from Oxford to Washington, D.C., where he was press secretary for U.S. Rep. Marion Berry. In March 2002, he was named Director of Development for the William J. Clinton Foundation in Little Rock. Two years later, Warwick became Associate Editor of the Arkansas Times, where he wrote cover stories and a weekly opinion column. During this time, he co-hosted a program on Arkansas public television called “Unconventional Wisdom”. After that, Warwick was Publisher of the Oxford American magazine, and in 2009 he was named to the FOLIO:40, a list of the 40 most influential people in the national magazine industry. In August 2013, Warwick founded the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, where he served as the Executive Director until the Innovation Hub joined Winrock International in June 2016.

He has volunteered and served on the boards of directors for numerous community and nonprofit organizations and projects in Little Rock, including the Public Education Foundation, Little Rock Workforce Investment Board, Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families and the Arkansas Literacy Councils.
He received the University of Arkansas Young Alumni Award in 2005, and was named to the Arkansas Business “40 Under 40” in 2003.

Warwick and his wife, Jessica DeLoach Sabin, live in Little Rock.