Richard Cotton is the executive director of the

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, (PANYNJ; stylized, in logo since 2020, as Port Authority NY NJ) is a joint venture between the U.S. states of New York (state), New York and New Jersey, established in 1921 through an interstate c ...

. He assumed this role in August 2017.

Early life and education

Cotton was born in 1945 or 1946 in the Hyde Park neighborhood of

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. His mother, Sylvia Cotton, founded Illinois Action for Children, a nonprofit that focuses on ensuring all children, especially those facing poverty and racial injustice, have access the high-quality child care and early education they need to succeed in school and in life. His father, Eugene Cotton, served as a labor lawyer. Cotton has a BA from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

and a JD from

Yale Law School Yale Law School (YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824. The 2020–21 acceptance rate was 4%, the lowest of any law school in the United ...

Career

Early Career

After graduating from Yale Law School, Cotton served as a

law clerk A law clerk, judicial clerk, or judicial assistant is a person, often a lawyer, who provides direct counsel and assistance to a lawyer or judge by Legal research, researching issues and drafting legal opinions for cases before the court. Judicial ...

Judge A judge is a person who wiktionary:preside, presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a judicial panel. In an adversarial system, the judge hears all the witnesses and any other Evidence (law), evidence presented by the barris ...

J. Skelly Wright James Skelly Wright (January 14, 1911 – August 6, 1988) was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and previously was a United States district judge of the United States District ...

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (in case citations, D.C. Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. It has the smallest geographical jurisdiction of any of the U.S. courts of appeals, ...

from 1969–1970. He subsequently clerked for

Justice In its broadest sense, justice is the idea that individuals should be treated fairly. According to the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', the most plausible candidate for a core definition comes from the ''Institutes (Justinian), Inst ...

William J. Brennan Jr. William Joseph Brennan Jr. (April 25, 1906 – July 24, 1997) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1956 to 1990. He was the seventh-longest serving justice in Supr ...

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...

from 1970–1971.

Private Sector

Cotton worked at

NBCUniversal NBCUniversal Media, LLC (abbreviated as NBCU and Trade name, doing business as NBCUniversal or Comcast NBCUniversal since 2013) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational mass media and Show business, entertainment conglomerate (comp ...

for 25 years. During this time, he spent 20 years as Executive Vice President and General Counsel. He also served for four years as President and Managing Director of

CNBC Europe Consumer News and Business Channel Europe (referred to on air simply as CNBC) is a business and financial news television channel which airs across Europe. The station is based in London, where it shares the Adrian Smith (architect), Adrian S ...

, based in London.

Government

Cotton has served in various governmental roles throughout his career. He was Executive Secretary to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare under Secretary Joseph A. Califano Jr. He later worked as Special Assistant for Renewable Energy to Deputy Secretary

John Sawhill John Crittenden Sawhill (June 12, 1936 – May 18, 2000) was president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy and the 12th President of New York University (NYU). Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1936, Sawhill graduated from Princeton University's Woodro ...

at the U.S. Department of Energy. From 2015 to 2017, Cotton worked for New York Governor

Andrew Cuomo Andrew Mark Cuomo ( , ; born December 6, 1957) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 56th governor of New York from 2011 until his resignation in 2021. A member of the Democratic Party and son of former governor Mario Cuomo, ...

as Special Counsellor to the Governor for Interagency Initiatives. In this role, he focused on infrastructure projects in downstate New York, including

LaGuardia LaGuardia Airport ( ) – colloquially known as LaGuardia or simply LGA – is a civil airport in East Elmhurst, Queens, New York City, situated on the northwestern shore of Long Island, bordering Flushing Bay. Covering , the facility wa ...

and

JFK John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until Assassination of John F. Kennedy, his assassination in 1963. He was the first Catholic Chur ...

Airports, the

Moynihan Train Hall Moynihan Train Hall is an expansion of Pennsylvania Station (New York City), Pennsylvania Station, the main intercity and commuter rail station in New York City, into the city's former main post office building, the James A. Farley Building. ...

and Penn-Farley Complex, the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge (formerly Tappan Zee Bridge), the

Jacob K. Javits Convention Center The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, commonly known as the Javits Center, is a large convention center on Eleventh Avenue between 34th Street and 38th Street in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, New York City. It was designed by architect James In ...

expansion, and the

Metropolitan Transportation Authority The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is a New York state public benefit corporations, public benefit corporation in New York (state), New York State responsible for public transportation in the New York metropolitan area, New York Ci ...

's Second Avenue Subway project.New York Governor Andrew Cuomo reportedly referred to Cotton as New York’s “czar of infrastructure."

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

In August 2017, Cotton was appointed Executive Director of the

, the bi-state agency responsible for managing regional transportation infrastructure including airports, tunnels, bridges, ports, and the World Trade Center site.

Personal life

Cotton married Elizabeth W. Smith, the Assistant Commissioner of

New York City Department of Parks and Recreation The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also called the Parks Department or NYC Parks, is the department of the government of New York City responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecolog ...

, in 2011. On March 9, 2020, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced that Cotton had been infected by

SARS-CoV-2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the respiratory illness responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had the Novel coronavirus, provisional nam ...

, the virus that causes

coronavirus disease 2019 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include f ...

. His wife also tested positive for the virus, and the couple were reported to have self-quarantined in their home. Cuomo reported on March 22 that Cotton had recovered from SARS-CoV-2 without having been hospitalized.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cotton, Rick 1940s births Living people Harvard University alumni Businesspeople from Chicago Port Authority of New York and New Jersey people Yale Law School alumni Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States NBCUniversal people