Grigsby sets up new foundation for Cajun Industries employees

Businessman, activist and philanthropist Lane Grigsby has hired the first outside executive director to run the Boo Grigsby Foundation, which he founded with his family in 2007 and which until recently was run by his daughter, Tricia Grigsby Sanchez. Elizabeth Firesheets, a Baton Rouge native and recent LSU graduate, will run the foundation, which has awarded more than $1.5 million in grants to nonprofits in the areas of education and health care. Firesheets will also run a new foundation Grigsby is creating for the employees of Cajun Industries, the company he founded in 1973. “The employees will be in charge of the foundation and will decide where they want to give their money,” says Grigsby, who will capitalize the startup foundation with $2 million. “That will be the corpus, and for every $1 an employee puts up, the foundation will match it.” Grigsby says the Cajun Industries Foundation will have very little overhead and, therefore, will be a better way for employees to give their philanthropic dollars directly to needy causes in the community. Grigsby says Firesheets came along at just the right time to help him run the two foundations, as Sanchez was ready to devote more time to her family. Firesheets will also help Grigsby with his Fight Not Fear organization, which is championing the cause of consolidating the parish’s two law enforcement agencies. —Stephanie Riegel