The MBTA and transportation generally will be among the pressing issues that Gov.-elect Maura Healey will walk into when she takes office next week, and on Thursday she announced that she had selected a lawyer with extensive experience in the field to serve as her administration’s chief legal counsel.
Paige Scott Reed, who the Healey team said will be the first Black woman appointed to the position in Massachusetts history, previously served as general counsel to both the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and the MBTA — and to the Boston 2024 group that made an ill-fated push to bring the Olympics to Boston. She is currently a partner at Prince Lobel Tye LLP.
“I’m deeply honored for the opportunity to join this historic administration and to serve the people of Massachusetts,” Scott Reed said in a statement. “The Governor-elect and Lieutenant Governor-elect and I share a commitment to protecting people’s rights, centering equity in all that we do and moving Massachusetts forward. I’m excited to build a team that will lead on our values and deliver results.”
Healey called Scott Reed “an experienced, successful attorney who has a deep knowledge of state government and a record of forming public-private partnerships to get things done.” Scott Reed had been tapped to serve on the Healey transition team’s transportation committee, and on Attorney General-elect Andrea Campbell’s transition team. She previously served as finance committee chair for Rachael Rollins’ district attorney campaign.
Healey’s announcement, which includes passages pulled directly from Scott Reed’s biography on the Prince Lobel Tye website, described her as an “instrumental” part of the process that led to Keolis becoming the MBTA’s commuter rail operator and pointed to her involvement in a public-private partnership to redevelop Back Bay Station, her role in the implementation of the T’s “Construction Manager/General Contractor” project delivery strategy, and her work to help land $1 billion in federal funding for the Green Line Extension project.
Scott Reed earned a degree from Harvard College in 1992 and graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an executive editor of the Harvard Law Review, in 1997. She is a past president of the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association.