About Us

Richard W. Roper served as Director of the Planning Department of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from August 2007 until August 2010 when he retired.  In this capacity, he led the department in anticipating emerging needs, significant threats, future opportunities for the agency, its partners, and the people it serves, and assisted its leaders in devising effective responses.  Mr. Roper had a long career in public affairs, during which he has held senior level positions in local, state, regional, and federal government agencies and has had experience in nonprofit organizations, academic research, teaching, and administration.  For 11 years prior to his return to the Port Authority, Mr. Roper was president of The Roper Group, a public policy consulting firm specializing in economic and social policy research and analysis.  Between 1992 to 1996, before establishing The Roper Group, he served as Director of the Port Authority’s Office of Economic and Policy Analysis, followed by a brief stint as director of the agency’s Office of Business and Job Opportunity.  Prior to his Port Authority experience, Mr. Roper was on staff for 12 years at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.  Before Princeton, from 1978 – 1980, he served in the Carter Administration as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Commerce (Juanita Kreps) and then as Director of the Department’s Office of State and Local Government Assistance.  Roper began his public affairs career in Newark, NJ where he has since contributed to the development of the social, political and cultural infrastructure of urban New Jersey.  He was a Founding Trustee of Newark Emergency Services for Families, co-founder of New Jersey future, a statewide land use planning organization, and Leadership Newark, an organization dedicated to identifying and nurturing talented individuals in business, education, arts, government, social services, and the non-profit sector in Newark and it’s vicinity.  Mr. Roper is on the board of Newark’s economic development corporation, the Brick City Development Corporation, the Fund for New Jersey, La Casa de Don Pedro, a social welfare organization serving the Latino community and others, as well as University Heights Charter School and the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.  He is also a member of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct.  Roper is the author of a number of articles and publications addressing social, economic, governmental, and political issues of import to urban New Jersey, to the state of New Jersey, and to the New York Metropolitan region.  Roper has been married to the former Marlene Peacock since 1969.  They are the parents of two sons, Jelani Y. and Akil S. Roper, both of whom are lawyers.