Rick Cotton

Richard Cotton is the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He assumed this role in August 2017.^[1]

Rick Cotton
Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Incumbent
Assumed office August 14, 2017
Appointed by	Andrew Cuomo
Preceded by	Pat Foye
Personal details
Alma mater	Harvard University (BA) Yale University (JD)

Early life and education

Cotton was born in 1945 or 1946 in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.^[2] 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 and a JD from Yale Law School.^[3]

Career

Early Career

After graduating from Yale Law School, Cotton served as a law clerk to Judge J. Skelly Wright on United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1969–1970. He subsequently clerked for Justice William J. Brennan Jr. on Supreme Court of the United States from 1970–1971.

Private Sector

Cotton worked at NBCUniversal for 25 years. During this time, he spent 20 years as Executive Vice President and General Counsel.^[3] He also served for four years as President and Managing Director of CNBC Europe, based in London.^[4]

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 at the U.S. Department of Energy.

From 2015 to 2017, Cotton worked for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as Special Counsellor to the Governor for Interagency Initiatives. In this role, he focused on infrastructure projects in downstate New York, including LaGuardia and JFK Airports, the Moynihan Train Hall and Penn-Farley Complex, the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge (formerly Tappan Zee Bridge), the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center expansion, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Second Avenue Subway project.^[4] New York Governor Andrew Cuomo reportedly referred to Cotton as New York’s “czar of infrastructure."^[1]

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

In August 2017, Cotton was appointed Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the bi-state agency responsible for managing regional transportation infrastructure including airports, tunnels, bridges, ports, and the World Trade Center site.^[1]

Personal life

Cotton married Elizabeth W. Smith, the Assistant Commissioner of New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, in 2011.^[2]

On March 9, 2020, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced that Cotton had been infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019. His wife also tested positive for the virus, and the couple were reported to have self-quarantined in their home.^[5] Cuomo reported on March 22 that Cotton had recovered from SARS-CoV-2 without having been hospitalized.^[6]

See also

List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 3)