Gabe Klein

Early years

Gabe Klein was born in Hartford, Connecticut. Before high school he spent ages 10–11 studying under Swami Satchidananda at the Yogaville Vidyalayam interfaith school in Buckingham, Virginia. He graduated from Virginia Tech in 1994 and holds a degree in marketing management.

Private sector career

Gabe Klein’s career began working as Director of Stores for Bikes USA. Bikes USA was the nation’s largest bike retailer in the 1990s. Klein had Director-level roles at ProfessionaLink, a national technology-consulting start-up based in Washington D.C. where he led marketing and business development efforts for Fortune 1000 Companies. At the end of 2002, Klein became regional Vice President for Zipcar, overseeing the car sharing system in the D.C. region (2002–2006).

Klein was hired by Founder Robin Chase at the end of 2002 to spearhead growth in the nascent startup which had less than 30 cars in Washington D.C. and no more than 150 nationally. Shortly after Chase stepped down as CEO and retained a board seat. Klein and his team worked on models for fleet management and operations, and marketing. These models are widely credited with helping the start-up gain its footing to scale nationally, and model for international expansion. Washington was also the only region that Zipcar had competition in the mid-2000s in Flexcar. Washington based investor Steve Case and his Revolution LLC venture firm approached Zipcar about investing or purchasing the company based on his favorable view of the Washington operations. Initially rebuffed by the Zipcar Board of Directors, Case took an interest in Flexcar. When Flexcar was swallowed by Flexcar after being outflanked in Washington D.C., Case became the largest single investor in Zipcar, his original goal. Zipcar went to an initial public offering at a $1 billion valuation after Klein left the company, and was ultimately taken private and sold to Avis Budget Group for close to $500 million in 2013, netting $96 million for Case but was widely seen as a disappointing result for shareholders as companies like Hertz and Enterprise Group entered the traditional car sharing business, while Car2Go and Ridesharing pioneer's Lyft and Uber Technologies innovated as Zipcar grew in size and number of markets but not in comparable utility.

In 2006, Gabe left Zipcar and wrote 2 business plans. The first for point-to point carsharing based on the emergence of the smartphone and the forthcoming launch of the Smart (automobile) in the United States by Roger Penske's United Auto Group. Klein pursued the project, internally named "Virgin-Go" for over a year with Richard Branson's Virgin Group going so far as to gain a release from his non-compete with Zipcar. Due to changing priorities and personnel at Virgin USA and a hold on all new investments post-launch of the Virgin America airline, the project was shelved by Virgin. Late in 2007, Daimler launched an identical pilot service utilizing Smart Cars, a smart-phone application, and named "Car2Go" displacing the Virgin brand.

Concurrently, Klein worked on a second business model with 2 business partners and input from the Government of the District of Columbia. The plan was for a mobile food truck concept after Klein was inspired by Howard Schultz's book, "Pour Your Heart Into It," about the rise of Starbucks and after seeing the mobile Mud Truck on the streets of New York City. The company he co-founded, "On The Fly," was an electric vehicle vending company and the food trucks themselves were branded "SmartKarts." On the Fly was one of the first multi-unit and multi-channel food truck companies in the U.S. with brick and mortar stores and mobile catering operations added in 2008. On The Fly custom built electric SmartKarts were able to work on the street, or sidewalk, serving local, fresh, natural foods to the DC area. Ironically, the new business model was stymied by bureaucracies within the District Government. Gabe turned the company over to his partners when Mayor Adrian Fenty asked him to lead the District of Columbia Department of Transportation which was one of the agencies that kept On The Fly from flourishing by disallowing free-flowing access to the curbside. Gabe Klein served 12 years in the private sector before moving to the public sector.

Currently Klein is a Special Venture Partner at Fontinalis Partners in Detroit Fontinalis is a venture capital firm focused on the intersection of mobility and technology and was co-founded by Ford Motor Company Chairman and former CEO, Bill Ford

Washington, D.C.

Gabe was unanimously elected as Director of the District of Columbia Department of Transportation (DDOT), appointed by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty in December, 2008 and serving until the end of Fenty’s term on December 31, 2010. Klein immediately solicited feedback from a variety of stakeholders and advocates to determine how to reinvent the government agency as a customer-focused operation. After months of work, Klein and the DDOT team released their first "Action Agenda" modeled on the New York City Sustainable Streets plan released the previous year. Eschewing the typical long-term planning, Klein and team prioritized 2 year actionable metrics to mirror the political realities of government combined with the pace of start-up culture that was his operating norm.

Under the Fenty administration, Gabe Klein oversaw the following new and on-going projects and initiatives:

Chicago

Gabe joined Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration in Chicago on May 16, 2011 as the Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Transportation.

Under his administration, Gabe Klein oversaw the following new and on-going projects and initiatives:

Gabe Klein oversaw the publication of the following documents  :

Publications

Gabe Klein with David Vega Barachowitz Start-Up City: Inspiring Private and Public Entrepreneurship, Getting Projects Done, and Having Fun Island Press (2015) ISBN 9781610916905