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Name: Winfree, Greg
Current Position: Previous Administrator

The Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), which manages the Transportation Department’s research and development programs with the goal of creating technologies that can be used to improve transportation, has an acting administrator who has worked at the agency since 2010. On June 2, 2011, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and RITA Administrator Peter Appel appointed Gregory D. Winfree to become the next deputy administrator on July 15. Upon Appel’s resignation, Winfree became the Acting Administrator on October 8, 2011.

 

Born in New York circa 1964, Winfree earned a B.S. in Communications and Public Relations at St. John’s University in 1986 and a J.D. from Georgetown University in 1989, where he served as a lead articles editor for The Tax Lawyer, the A.B.A. journal of taxation.

 

After a stint at a Washington, D.C., law firm, about which he later wrote a chapter in the book My First Year as a Lawyer: Real-World Stories from America's Lawyers, Winfree served as a trial attorney in the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section of the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Then, he embarked on an in-house career pathway, working as senior litigation counsel at Union Carbide and as director of litigation at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which is now part of Pfizer.

 

Winfree worked as chief litigation counsel for Freeport-McMoRan Corporation, which through its subsidiary, Phelps Dodge, is one of the world’s largest producers of copper, gold and other industrial and precious metals. During these years, Winfree resided in Phoenix, Arizona, where he also founded the Eight Iron Golf Apparel Company to market his two patents, registered in 1995, for a “sport shirt or other garment provided with a load-distributing shoulder yoke for relieving the strain resulting from carrying a golf bag.” 

 

Winfree was also the co-founder of Charting Your Own Course (CYOC), a professional networking organization for minority in-house attorneys.

 

Winfree left the private sector for public service again in 2010, and was sworn in on March 15, 2010, as chief counsel at RITA. 

-Matt Bewig

 

Official Biography

Out There on My Own (by Gregory D. Winfree)

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