Paul Jablonski began his career in the transit industry at an early age by driving a bus for the University of Massachusetts campus in Amherst. He then moved on to the Capital District Transportation Authority (CDTA) in Albany, N.Y., where he was an assistant to the executive director of the system. Jablonski then transferred to the private sector, working for ATE, where he was assigned to develop a transportation system in Saudi Arabia. During his nearly four-and-a-half-year stint overseas, his company managed about 60-plus systems in Saudi Arabia. Jablonski was promoted to general manager of the country's largest system based in the coastal city of Jeddah. This operation consisted of 275 buses and carried an estimated 300,000 people per day. He then headed back to the public side, taking on the assistant general manager position for the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority in Cincinnati. Within a year, he became general manager, where he stayed for 11 years before taking on the job in San Diego as CEO of MTS.