Program Leadership

As the Project Manager for the IBR Program, Christina Martinez leads the General Engineering Consultant (GEC) team responsible for complex planning and design work. This includes overseeing the Program’s work necessary to advance through the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process toward a Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, followed by an Amended Record of Decision.

Christina is a transportation project director with WSP who has a proven ability to lead large project teams and deliver regionally significant multimodal and multidisciplinary transportation projects and programs.

Prior to becoming a consultant, she had a successful two-decade career at WSDOT working in planning and leading environmental policy on multiple megaprojects in the Puget Sound area.

Frank Green is an Assistant Program Administrator for the IBR program. He represents WSDOT, where he has worked since 2002, in roles ranging from transportation engineer all the way to his most recent position as Assistant Regional Administrator for Development and Delivery. He has worked on numerous highway, rail and bridge projects in Washington and helped lead a host of high-speed rail projects involving WSDOT, BNSF Railway and Sound Transit. He enjoys spending time with his family and collecting sports cards in his spare time. He may not have grown up thinking about a career involving bridges and tunnels and roads, but as it turns out, the transportation field was precisely what Frank was looking for.

“It’s funny,” Frank says. “My mom was a teacher, my dad was a police officer, and I don’t know that I ever wanted to follow in their footsteps. I think engineering was naturally where I should have been, but I just didn’t know that as a kid.”

In his current role with the IBR program, Frank is working to oversee and supervise the day-to-day work that is driving the program forward. This follows his most recent position with WSDOT’s Southwest Region, where he was the Assistant Regional Administrator for Development and Delivery, as well as a prior role as project lead guiding the agency’s high speed rail efforts between Vancouver and Tacoma from 2014 to 2017.

Prior to that, Frank spent almost eight years as the structures engineering manager on the Columbia River Crossing project, ensuring that all of the structural and geotechnical work on the project met the requirements of WSDOT, ODOT, the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration.

Working on megaprojects like the IBR program, however, was probably the farthest thing from Frank’s mind as a kid. He grew up in Montana and wanted little more than to play college football. His goals changed as he went through high school and discovered computer science. But after earning a football scholarship to Montana State University he quickly found that computer programming was not exactly for him. He turned to his football teammates for advice and found that one of them was a civil engineering major.

“He told me about some of the things he did on an internship that summer and I thought ‘Hey, that seems pretty neat,’” he says. “And it started clicking for me.”

After getting married in college, Frank’s wife pursued post-graduate studies in Portland, Oregon, which meant he needed to find work in the region. He remembered Vancouver from having stayed at a motel on Hayden Island during football road trips. So, after attending a career fair at MSU and talking with a WSDOT recruiter, he submitted an application and quickly found himself in a job inspecting bridges out of the agency’s Southwest Region office. That was the beginning of a fruitful relationship.

“Funny enough, I’m coming up on 20 years at WSDOT now, and it’s just grown,” he says. His most recent management role with the IBR program, however, is his biggest. And compared with his early days as an engineer with the agency, technology and digital communication are some of the factors in delivering successful projects that have changed the most.

“It’s going to be critical to keep the community engaged,” Frank says. “The community is telling us that equity and climate action are important factors for this program. Keeping our partners and the public engaged, and communicating how we are integrating their input in actionable and measurable ways, will be very important in allowing this program to be successful.”

Ray Mabey is an Assistant Program Administrator for the IBR program and also serves as the State Bridge Engineer for ODOT. He has over 30 years of experience as an engineer, administrator and manager with ODOT, where he has worked on hundreds of different bridge programs of various sizes. He has extensive experience with combined project delivery, engineering and program and project management experience.

Ray might be a small-town guy at heart, but he loves nothing more than making a big-time impact on the world around him. As Assistant Program Administrator for the IBR program, Ray is perfectly positioned to do exactly that. In this role, he is supervising and directing much of the day-to-day work of the program, bringing his three decades of experience and expertise with ODOT into play.

Ray has already had a profound effect on Oregon’s system of highway bridges. Early in his career, a routine bridge inspection helped discover engineering weaknesses that resulted in diagonal cracking in numerous bridges constructed in the 1940s and 50s along Interstate 5 and 84, as well as numerous state highways.

“We found that Oregon had a very unique problem,” Ray says. “We had a large inventory of bridges that were cracked and had a potential for failure and it led to a lot of work on routes across the state.”

Ray’s inspection work ultimately led to the passage of the massive Oregon Transportation Investment Act, which began in 2001 and led to the repair or replacement of nearly 200 of Oregon’s bridges. It also helped propel his career into administration and management.

It was a long way from Sitka, Alaska, where he grew up in a “little town on a rock.”
“I came to Oregon to dry out,” he says with a laugh.

That meant heading first to Corvallis, Oregon ­­– which, next to Sitka, seemed like a big city. He ultimately settled in McMinnville with his family, where he now serves on the board of the Celtic Heritage Alliance and takes part in Scottish Highland Games events up and down the West Coast throwing the caber, which is essentially a heavy log.

Before that, Ray earned a degree in Civil Engineering at Oregon State University and worked for several firms in the private sector performing structural work. He landed at ODOT as a bridge designer in 1992 and over the next three decades worked in a variety of roles relating to the state’s bridges. That included his appointment as a Program Manager in 2011 on the Columbia River Crossing project. There, he learned valuable lessons about the importance of communication and equity of process that are more important than ever in his current role helping administer the IBR program.

“How we carry out this program matters more on the equity and climate side than ever before,” Ray says. “We’re taking a very intentional focus on that, as well as the impact on small and minority-owned businesses.”

Acknowledging the historic effects of earlier transportation efforts on Portland’s BIPOC population is also critical, he notes.

“This program is about carrying it out in a way that has net benefit effects on the communities of concern rather than just minimizing harm,” he says. “It’s about benefiting those communities, and it’s a mindset and an approach that is pretty powerful. I like to think we are leading that effort here in the Northwest.”

Paige Schlupp comes to IBR from TriMet, where she most recently served as a Project Director for the $215 million MAX Red Line Extension and Reliability Improvements Project, also known as “Better Red.” Paige is a diligent and dedicated team leader, project manager and landscape architect with over 25 years of experience in design and construction. Her career has taken her from landscape architecture into transportation, which has allowed her to leverage her interpersonal skills and passion for community and excel at a series of challenging positions that have contributed to the region’s livability.

Paige graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in landscape architecture before launching her career with some of Oregon’s top landscape design firms. She joined TriMet in 2007 and has since worked on a wide variety of projects in various capacities, including Assistant Resident Engineer on the Westside Express Service (WES) project, Station Area and Urban Design Lead on the East Segment of the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail (Orange Line) project, and Manager of the Stations & Guideways Department, where she oversaw a team of project managers and associated projects related to refurbishing stations and trackways throughout TriMet’s light rail system.

Her most recent post as Project Director for the Better Red initiative saw her lead the project team through final design, including the negotiation of intergovernmental agreements directly with the Port of Portland and City of Portland, and coordination with entities including the Oregon Department of Transportation and Union Pacific Railroad. The project involved improvements to the Gateway Transit Center, as well as the completion of a second track to Portland International Airport and the extension of MAX Red Line service into Hillsboro. Work was completed in Summer of 2024 four months ahead of schedule and over $10 million under budget.

As Assistant Program Administrator, Paige will help oversee the transit element of the program involving the extension of light rail service from the Expo Center in North Portland to Hayden Island and downtown Vancouver as it moves through completion of the environmental phase and into construction.

Born and raised in Utah, Paige enjoys time in the outdoors in Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains doing outdoor activities such as hiking, camping, rafting, fly-fishing and skiing, all of which she can at best claim to have a mediocre of level of skill, but she doesn’t let that stop her from enjoying it. She first moved here to attend the University Oregon, fell in love with the northwest, and never left.  She also enjoys the wonderful things the Portland has to offer for music, arts, food, culture and community. She volunteered with Friends of Trees as a natural area crew leader for fourteen years and served on the board of the Halprin Landscape Conservancy.

“It is an honor to be part of the incredibly talented team working on this project. Linking these two states with a bridge that accommodates all modes of transportation and transit will have a major impact on the future for many who live here and travel through this region.”

Steve Witter serves as the IBR Program’s Deputy Assistant Program Administrator for transit. He is a transportation leader dedicated to connecting communities through smart, sustainable infrastructure. For more than two decades, he has helped shape the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area’s transit and transportation landscape, leading major projects that improve mobility and strengthen the region’s future.
Steve helps guide the Program’s transition from planning to implementation with a focus on design, funding and community collaboration to deliver a modern, multimodal bridge that serves people across Oregon and Washington.
Before joining C-TRAN, he led Mott MacDonald’s Portland office, overseeing business development, project delivery and staff growth. Steve also spent more than 20 years at TriMet, where he advanced to Executive Director of Engineering, Construction and Planning. There, he led large-scale infrastructure programs such as Westside Express Service Commuter Rail project and implementation of the MAX Orange Line, secured federal funding, and championed local engagement in contracting.
A graduate of the University of Oregon and Portland State University, he is a passionate advocate for collaboration, innovation and mentoring the next generation of transportation professionals.
“I’ve spent much of my career working to improve how people move through our region,” Witter said.

“Having worked previously on the Columbia River Crossing, I’m passionate about seeing the IBR Program completed in a way that creates new connections for our communities, grows our economy, and supports a more sustainable future for the Pacific Northwest.”

• Senator Annette Cleveland
• Representative Jake Fey
• Representative Paul Harris
• Representative John Ley
• Senator Marko Liias
• Representative Ed Orcutt
• Senator Jeff Wilson
• Representative Sharon Wylie

• Senator Chris Gorsek
• Representative Susan McLain
• Senator Brian Boquist
• Senator Lynn Findley
• Senator Lew Frederick
• Representative Shelly Boshart Davis
• Representative Khanh Pham
• Representative Kevin Mannix

Due to the magnitude and complexity of a bi-state bridge replacement program, it is critical that key agency partners have a shared understanding of how to work together. Beginning in the winter of 2019, ODOT and WSDOT reengaged the following regional entities central to program development.

• TriMet
• C-TRAN
• Oregon Metro
• Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council
• City of Portland
• City of Vancouver
• Port of Portland
• Port of Vancouver USA

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) will oversee the federal environmental review process, as defined by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and may have a funding role if federal funding sources are identified. These agencies are responsible for ensuring that the program complies with the requirements of NEPA along with other applicable federal regulations.

Other federal agencies will have regulatory oversight in the program, including:

• U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
• U.S. Coast Guard
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• U.S. General Services Administration
• Federal Aviation Administration
• National Marine Fisheries Service
• National Park Service