Matt Rocheleau | Boston.com

The transportation division of the National Research Council has named MBTA General Manager Beverly A. Scott the recipient of a biennial award recognizing humanitarian leadership.

The Sharon D. Banks Award for Humanitarian Leadership in Transportation has been given by the Transportation Research Board every two years since 2002 to an individual who exemplifies the ideals of the honor’s namesake, officials said.

Banks, who chaired the research board’s executive committee in 1998 and worked as general manager of Oakland, Calif.-based public transit agency AC Transit from 1991 until she died in 1999 of complications from a series of strokes, was “known for her personal integrity, for nurturing and mentoring young transportation professionals, and for bringing together people of diverse backgrounds and commitments in the pursuit of organizational excellence,” according to the board.

She was the first African American and first woman to lead AC Transit, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Scott, the MBTA’s first African-American woman leader, was picked for the award “for her attention to diversity, fairness, and equity and for her tireless efforts to improve the lives of others as well as to the attention she pays to the personal aspects of the decisions she makes and the impact of those decisions on the lives of those who depend on public transit for their livelihood is core to her recognition as a people-oriented transit manager,” said a statement from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. {….}