Editor’s Note: This story has been updated since its original publication to include additional details and comments.
Stephen Moret is leaving his post as president and CEO of the LSU Foundation to take a job as president and CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, it was announced today.
Moret, previously the state’s economic development chief, has held the post at LSU since May 2015. He says the new position offers him an opportunity “to leverage my experience and education in a new way,” as well as be closer to family. His mother lives in Richmond; his in-laws are planning to live there for much of each year going forward.
Says Moret: “The combination of the family and professional benefits represents a rare opportunity that we simply could not pass up.”
Prior to joining the LSU Foundation, Moret was appointed as secretary of Louisiana Economic Development. He had previously served as president and CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, or BRAC; management consultant with McKinsey & Company; project supervisor with Trinity Consultants; assistant to the chancellor of LSU; an independent consultant to Harvard University; and a public policy fellow with the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, or PAR.
“Stephen has left an indelible mark on our fundraising efforts,” says LSU President F. King Alexander in a prepared statement. “He has positioned our upcoming campaign for great success, and we wish him well on his next endeavor.”
Since joining the foundation, Moret has acted as a liaison to Alexander to ensure more efficient and effective fundraising efforts among LSU’s affiliate support organizations statewide, a news release says.
Under his, tenure, the LSU Foundation has modernized the donor database it shares with the LSU Alumni Association and Tiger Athletic Foundation; crafted a blueprint for the future of development at LSU, in collaboration with LSU’s affiliate support organizations statewide; defined the operational architecture needed to launch the university’s next capital campaign; built LSU’s first annual giving team and introduced a campuswide, collaborative annual giving effort; and broken ground on the Nicholson Gateway Project.
“LSU is Louisiana’s strongest economic asset,” Moret says in the news release, “and the plan we have developed with President Alexander and the campus leadership team to achieve and sustain a transformational level of academic philanthropy is one that I believe will have a multigenerational impact on LSU.”
Moret served as Louisiana’s economic development secretary from 2008 to 2015. In announcing Moret’s appointment to the Virginia agency, VEDP Chairman Dan Clemente called him “one of the top economic development leaders in the country,” according to an online report by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
T. Cass Gaiennie, chair of the LSU Foundation Board of Directors, called Moret a “phenomenal leader.” He will remain with the LSU Foundation through December. The LSU Foundation will name an interim CEO by the end of the year and will begin a nationwide search for a permanent replacement as soon as possible.
