Va. Beach man succeeds Connaughton as Va.‘s Secretary of Transportation

Virginia Governor-elect Terry McAuliffe has announced his selection of Aubrey Layne as Secretary of Transportation. He succeeds Sean Connaughton, a former chairman of the Prince William County VA Board of County Supervisors, who has been serving under Gov. Bob McDonnell.

Layne has been a member of the Commonwealth Transportation Board since 2009. He lives in Virginia Beach.

The selection of Layne as Secretary of Transportation signifies McAuliffe’s commitment to tackling the transportation challenges facing the Hampton Roads region and the entire Commonwealth, as well as his continued efforts to put together a bipartisan administration focused on working with members of both parties to strengthen Virginia’s economy, according to a news release.

Layne was quoted in the news release as saying, “The Governor-elect has made a more modern, efficient transportation system a principal goal of his administration, and I am ready to take on that challenge and hit the ground running to do what we need to do to improve our transportation infrastructure.”

Here is Layne’s biography, as released by McAuliffe:

Aubrey Layne has served on the Commonwealth Transportation Board as the Hampton Roads representative since 2009, when he was appointed by then-Governor Tim Kaine.

He also received a gubernatorial appointment from Governor McDonnell in 2010 to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge & Tunnel Commission and assumed the Commission’s chairmanship in 2012.

Layne is President of Achievable Dream Academies in Newport News, VA, a unique partnership between public schools and the local business community to give students, who are at risk of failure in school due to socio-economic factors, a chance to succeed.

Prior to joining An Achievable Dream, Layne was president and principal broker of Great Atlantic Properties, where he was responsible for the operational activities, new business acquisition, and capital improvement strategy, banking and investor relationships\. 

Layne earned a B.S. in Accounting from The University of Richmond (1979), is a Virginia Certified Public Accountant (CPA), and received an MBA from Old Dominion University with a concentration in International Business (1997).