The Des Moines Regional Transit Authority has named Amanda Wanke as its new chief operating officer as part of a series of promotions announced this week. Wanke has served as the transit agency’s chief external affairs officer for the past five years. She will now lead about 200 employees in DART’s transportation, maintenance and customer service departments. Other promotions announced today were Luis Montoya to chief planning officer and Erin Hockman to chief external affairs officer. Montoya joined DART in 2018 and has led the planning and implementation of two major service changes as well as DART’s first mobility on demand pilot. He will now oversee transit planning, scheduling, customer facility planning, strategic planning and business analytics. Hockman has been with DART for four years, after coming from Kemin Industries where she worked in marketing and communications. As chief external affairs officer, Hockman will lead marketing and communications, business and community partnerships, government relations and the popular vanpool service, RideShare.