Telos Advisers Welcomes Stephen Gardner as a Strategic Advisory Board Member

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Telos Advisers Welcomes Stephen Gardner as a Strategic Advisory Board Member

2026-02-03 02:00 Last Updated At：12:47

NEWARK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 2, 2026--

Telos Advisers, a national advisory firm specializing in complex transportation and infrastructure projects, announces that Stephen Gardner has joined the company as a Strategic Advisory Board Member. Gardner adds to an existing team of former transportation executives providing strategic advisory for complex infrastructure projects to public and private clients.

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Gardner most recently served as CEO of Amtrak, where he oversaw the nation’s largest intercity passenger rail operator and North America’s busiest railway, and led major system improvements, service expansions and ridership growth across the country.

“Stephen is a seasoned transportation expert with deep experience in railroading and federal transportation policy who has managed complex organizations and led one of the largest capital programs in the United States. We’re excited to welcome him to Telos and to leverage his expertise as we continue to support clients navigating critical infrastructure and investment initiatives,” said Telos Co-founders Eric Daleo and Megan Strickland.

Gardner began his career with Amtrak in 2009 after nearly a decade on Capitol Hill working on surface transportation policy, giving him over 15 years of experience at the national passenger railroad. His leadership has been instrumental in improving financial performance, strengthening safety, and modernizing the customer experience across Amtrak’s network, all while also leading the largest capital program in Amtrak’s history.

“I’m excited to join Telos’s Advisory Board and the committed group of seasoned transportation leaders and experts they’ve gathered to help clients take on challenging projects and achieve major goals,” said Gardner. “In an increasingly complex landscape, Telos has the know-how and unique capacity to support clients through rapid change, major transactions, and game-changing deals.”

Gardner’s key areas of focus at Telos Advisers will include rail and transit policy, funding strategy, customer experience and service planning, safety, and network development.

Gardner earned a Bachelor of Arts from Hampshire College.

About Telos:Telos Advisers (http://www.telosadvisers.com) is a Newark, New Jersey headquartered advisory firm specializing in the most complex transportation and infrastructure projects. Founded by former transportation executives, Telos understands firsthand the challenges of delivering highly regulated and operationally complex projects. Telos brings expertise in infrastructure planning and development, finance, compliance, and public procurement – helping clients successfully navigate the complexities of major capital projects.

Stay tuned Cincinnati: WKRP is coming to town for real, North Carolina station's director says

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Hold on to those Thanksgiving turkeys! WKRP is coming to Cincinnati — for real this time.

“I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” D.P. McIntire, who runs the media nonprofit that is auctioning the famous call letters, told The Associated Press. “Book it! It’s done!”

The call sign was made famous by “WKRP in Cincinnati,” a CBS television sitcom that ran from 1978 to 1982. It made stars of actors like Loni Anderson and Richard Sanders, whose bumbling newsman Les Nessman reported on a Thanksgiving promotion gone bad when live but flightless turkeys were dropped from a helicopter.

McIntire remembers watching the show’s first episode — featuring disc jockeys Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) — in the living room with his parents and older sister.

“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I proclaimed, `I’m going to be in radio. And if I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.’”

McIntire said he got his first on-air job at 13 as a news anchor at WNQQ “Wink FM” in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.

Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia, and Alexandria, Tennessee, previously bore the letters.

McIntire laughs as he recalls his chat with a woman in the agency’s audio division.

He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him he needed a third.

“Being the jokester that I am, I said, `Well, if you need three, and if it’s available, we’ll take WKRP,’” he said. “And 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, `Mr. McIntire. Congratulations. You’re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.’”

WKRP-LP — 101.9 on the FM dial — went live Nov. 30, 2015. The LP stands for “low power,” a class of station created to serve more local audiences that didn’t want mass-market content.

“Our format is what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America,” he said. “There is Greats of the 80s, Sounds of the 70s, 90s Rewind.”

LPFM is restricted to nonprofit organizations like his Oak City Media, and it’s definitely local.

“Your broadcast capacity is limited to 100 watts,” McIntire said. “So, your average range is between, depending on your terrain and circumstances, 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.”

And, by necessity, it’s a low-budget affair.

The transmitter is in a corner of McIntire’s garage, between a recycling bin and the cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna sits atop a 25-foot (7.62-meter) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio — microphones and a mixing board hooked up to a computer — is in McIntire’s basement.

Like the WKRP of television, McIntire and his partners set out to be “irreverent.” One of their offerings is a two-hour show called “Weird Al and Friends,” focusing on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.

They even had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don’t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — they hand out gift certificates to a local grocery store.

“We don’t toss them out of helicopters,” he said with a laugh.

After more than a decade on the air, the 56-year-old McIntire decided it was time to pass the reins.

“We’re in a position where the older members like me who started the station are turning the leadership over to younger members,” he said. “They’re not interested in radio.”

They put out a call for bids to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.

They intend to use the proceeds for a new nonprofit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said IBC will be “geared specifically toward helping these new broadcasters get up and running, get the consulting that they need in order to be, hopefully, more successful than we have been.”

Oak City Media was all set to hand off the television-related suffixes — WKRPTV and WKRPDT — when another group defaulted on the agreement, McIntire said. But he said the Cincinnati deal is in the bag, he just can’t legally discuss it.

“It will be radio,” he said. “But that’s all I can tell you at this time.”

Robert Thompson, who uses a season 2 episode of “WKRP” in his TV history class at Syracuse University, said it’s telling that people see real value in a fictional station whose call letters invoke the word “crap.”

“The value comes from the love of the characters for each other,” he said. “And now by buying this thing, the value comes from our love of the characters themselves.”

Whatever they do with the call sign, McIntire hopes they will be true to the show that inspired it.

“It has a special place in the hearts of an awful lot of people,” he said. “And we have been very, very, very proud to have been a steward of that legacy.”