After just 18 months at the helm of the LSU Foundation, Stephen Moret’s recent announcement that he’s leaving the organization to take over the Virginia Economic Development Partnership took many by surprise—including members of the foundation’s own board of directors, writes Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel in her latest column.
“As it turns out,” Riegel writes, “Moret had been working on the deal for several months. Officials with the VEDP first reached out to him in July, though he says the offer wasn’t really serious at that point.”
In the months that would follow, however, the offer became serious, and the former Louisiana Economic Development secretary was presented with an opportunity to lead an economic development agency in a much bigger, wealthier state. The new opportunity would also mean that Moret, who has four young children, could live near his mother and in-laws, Riegel notes.
“I planned to be at LSU for many years, maybe even the rest of my career,” Moret tells Riegel. “But it was too good an opportunity to pass up.”
“Still, you have to wonder if Moret wasn’t a little bored at the LSU Foundation—not that there wasn’t plenty there to keep him busy,” Riegel writes. “LSU’s advancement efforts considerably lag those of its peer institutions, and LSU President F. King Alexander brought Moret on board in April 2015 to overhaul the university’s fundraising apparatus and bring it into the 21st century.”
But Moret was more than up to the job, Riegel says.
“After serving as one of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s closest advisers for nearly eight years—during which he snagged one multibillion dollar deal after another for the state—fundraising for LSU from the foundation’s staid offices on Sorority Row might have been just a tad underwhelming for the overachieving Moret,” she writes.
Moret laughs off the suggestion that the position lacked enough pressure or prestige.
“No, that was not the case,” he says. “I really enjoyed getting to know the colleges, the deans, the faculty, as well as the broad range of important work happening at LSU.”
And though his tenure was short, Riegel says, Moret did accomplish much of what he was hired to do.
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