Florida Turnpike Executive Director
Florida Department of Transportation

With nearly 20 years of professional experience in the transportation industry, Nicola Liquori brings a profound knowledge and passion to her role as the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer for Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise. The Enterprise, one of the premier toll agencies in the country with revenues of approximately $1 billion, operates under the Florida Department of Transportation.
A Certified Public Accountant, Nicola was tapped to lead Florida’s Turnpike in August 2019 after serving as the first Executive Director of SunRail in the Greater Orlando area and navigating a successful startup for this commuter rail system. While Executive Director for SunRail, she focused on three key areas: stabilizing finances; expanding service; and increasing ridership. Nicola methodically began to put processes in place to effect change and rallied staff to align with these three areas. The results? Operating costs stabilized, the system expanded an additional 17 miles with four new stations and ridership increased by almost 80%. The significant expansion and other accomplishments garnered SunRail a regional award by the Southern Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, part of the prestigious national America’s Transportation Awards.
Earlier in her accounting career, she joined the Enterprise as a consultant in 2002. Four years later, she became Deputy Chief Financial Officer (CFO), absorbing the Enterprise’s sound financial practices under the prior CFO. Her tenure as CFO was results-oriented: introduction of all-electronic tolling, implementation of annual inflationary rate increases, investments in projects that expanded the revenue base, and ratings upgrades from the three national bond rating agencies. The “AA” ratings put the Turnpike System in the elite field of having one of the highest ratings for a toll road agency in the country.
As the current Executive Director and CEO, Nicola is responsible for more than 2,400 staff members who work together in managing a statewide system of 500 centerline-mile toll roads from Jacksonville to Miami. The Turnpike Enterprise serves a diverse customer base that ranges from daily commuters to tourists to commercial carriers. Since returning to the Enterprise, Nicola has taken on numerous challenges, including the agency’s longstanding goal of national interoperability. Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise recently became a member of the E-ZPass network, which joins two of the largest toll account customer bases, SunPass and E-ZPass. The move is a significant step toward national interoperability and will substantially complete interoperability along the East Coast.
Nicola believes transportation has an exciting future and there has never been a better time to be a part of this ever-changing and complex industry. She looks forward to the next several years as technology becomes more embedded in delivering critical infrastructure.
A fan of numbers, Nicola received her accounting degree from Auburn University and can often be heard chanting “War Eagle” during college football season, or randomly during any season!