The Pipeline to New Orleans' Future: Creating a City of Lifelong Learners

PANELISTS:

Dr. Trivia Frazier, Founder, President and CEO of Obatala Sciences

Quentin Messer Jr., President and CEO of New Orleans Business Alliance

Dr. John Nicklow, President of the University of New Orleans

Dr. William Wainwright, Chancellor of Northshore Technical Community College

MODERATOR:

Marshall Redmon, Managing Partner of Phelps Dunbar LLP

SUMMARY:

As we look toward the future and a new normal, our panel addressed the opportunities and challenges that exist in New Orleans’ talent pipeline on both the industry and community levels. Panelists discussed the city’s key advantages and how to leverage them to overcome challenges and better compete in both legacy and emerging markets. The discussion covered how:

• Universities and colleges are pivoting to remote learning, offering broader access to education than ever before
• Higher education and business are collaborating to develop talent that meets workforce needs now and in the future
• Demands for more diversity and inclusion in high-paying jobs are being addressed by learning institutions
• Private and public investment are needed to build an environment where entrepreneurs can successfully build companies, shape industries and stay in the New Orleans area

Read on for a transcript of the conversation.

Note: The comments in this article and accompanying video were made on Dec. 8, 2020. This transcript has been condensed for brevity and clarity. Click here to watch the full discussion.

Marshall Redmon: We have a lot of talent in our city that we need to explore and develop, but we need to be honest about the challenges we're facing at the moment and how we move forward. Quentin, can you tell us about what you’re seeing now and how we're addressing the challenges before us?

Quentin Messer: There are three things I would propose that we keep in mind as we think about a new normal post-COVID. First, what were the underlying fundamentals for the city prior to COVID-19? Things were going well. We still had work to do to diversify the local economy in areas like bioinnovation, digital health and software development, but we were doing it. What COVID-19 exposed is that we weren't doing it fast enough, so we need to sort of accelerate that.

Second, we have had for too long an underappreciated higher education industry, not just in New Orleans, but in the whole region. Higher ed was one of the few industries that was blowing and going amid COVID-19. They were still educating young people and bringing new dollars and sales tax revenue into the local economy. We have to figure out how to tell that story better, and that's a challenge I have to take on myself.

The last thing I would say is, we need to be cognizant of extreme weather. Regardless of what people think about climate change, we still need energy and oil and gas. But we need to be careful and mindful of how consumers’ behaviors are changing in response to climate change. You see, for the first time, a lot of plant-based alternatives, and we have publicly traded companies premised on continued consumer migration away from animal-based agriculture. As we think about what’s on the other side of this pandemic, consumer sentiment might be changing. People may want to travel less because they’re concerned about their individual carbon footprint. Certain tech companies may not go back into their physical locations and may keep working remotely. Will this mean that they won't have large meetings? Will it mean that when people come to New Orleans, will they be looking for more vegetarian and vegan options? These are questions we have to ask ourselves.

But you never want to bet against New Orleans. Because if there's one city that's going to figure out how to make it to the other side, it’s New Orleans.

But I do want us to be cognizant of why COVID-19 was so devastating to our local economy. The virus attacks socialization, and no other city’s economy is as built on intense, tactile in-person socialization. A big part of the reason people love New Orleans is because we're giving people, from hugs to great food, music and cocktails. And how do you allow that sensibility to persist if we can't physically be together? Yes, we've got challenges, but I think we have solutions to those challenges.

Marshall Redmon: We have success stories, as well, that are terrific examples of what you can do here and how you can be successful. I would ask one of our success stories, Dr. Frazier, to give us her experience from cradle to grave in terms of developing a business here. How do you make that happen, and how do we attract and keep others here to do the same?

Dr. Trivia Frazier: I'll first say this—I am a native New Orleanian, and I light up when we talk about why so many people love our city. In the past, we were able to attract and retain people who started out as visitors for education or various reasons because of that socialization and because we’re so warm and inviting. I made a choice to not only receive my education here at both an HBCU and at Tulane, which is collectively coined as a PWI. I then made a decision to not only start our company here, but to find a way to grow it in the face of the normal challenges, as well as the challenges of growing a biotechnology company in a region that’s not known for biotechnology. We are contributing to laying a foundation to support not only our growth, but the growth of others. And that is a difficult task, because some of our needs within biotechnology are different from those of oil and gas, hospitality, the gig economy and other industries that make up our rich environment here.

Our needs are also different in the face of this pandemic. We manufacture biotech products, like stem cells, that require us to physically be there. So what we've done is look at the silver lining, which is finding a mechanism to abide by social distancing rules and safely bring in some of our staff while leveraging our existing relationships with UNO and some of the technical and community colleges, like Delgado. And we’ll look to Northshore Technical Community College as well. We see an opportunity for those up-and-coming researchers and scientists, as well as those in different fields, who are looking for a way to support their families and want to learn something new and exciting, but don’t know how to enter this field. What we’ve found is a way to take a highly skilled area that can have high pay in our particular industry and offer a faster route for individuals from different backgrounds to start working in this field. UNO has been a great partner for us in that aspect, and we're looking to continue to grow those relationships.

Marshall Redmon: Those resources and relationships tie back to what Quentin said about the socialization aspect of New Orleans. How do we leverage that advantage, even though in-person socialization is being kept in check at the moment? I’ll turn to Dr. Nicklow, because the university systems are at the forefront of changing how learning happens in environments such as this. Can you address how universities here are acting as an accelerator for access to education and other ways to deliver learning?

Dr. John Nicklow: When I think back to the beginning of the pandemic and the predictions of what would happen to higher ed, we've made tremendous progress through all of this. Learning continues. Moving everything to hybrid has provided access to education not just to our current students, but to working families, working adults and those with jobs. Now, suddenly, they have access to education, and this is something we're going to learn from and keep as part of our portfolio.

Today, most of our classes are hybrid, with some in-person labs and such with social distancing and the right protocols. We've transitioned in some really exciting ways, like the biotech research Dr. Frazier talked about. All of our researchers have pivoted their work to see how they could contribute to solving COVID-19 issues or its related impacts. We’ve also looked at solving issues around racial reckoning and how we can improve as a society. So it's brought about some really positive things. I look back to where we were a few months ago, worried about enrollment and finances and everything else, but we've actually grown enrollment this year and our fundraising is up. So we've done well through this, and it's because we've been able to transition what we do in a meaningful way.

Early on, we were declared an essential business, so to speak, and this allowed us to keep operating. And that's important, because education is transformational, and it is part of the solution to so many of the problems that we encounter throughout the world, both the current ones and the ones we will face in the future. Some of our highest enrollment growth programs are those that are aligned with businesses and in the city and growth areas, like hospitality, tourism, engineering, health care, computer science and cyber security. These are all things that we're excelling in, and we’re working closely with our business partners to make sure that we are providing the right talent pipeline to grow those areas.

Marshall Redmon: I suppose it comes back to the old adage that you adapt or perish. And we certainly have been adapting, which brings me to Dr. Wainwright. How do you determine business needs, not just before COVID-19, but during and after it, and how can we train talent to meet those needs?

Dr. William Wainwright: To echo my colleagues, we're seeing an acceleration. I see it as an all-encompassing acceleration, whether it's the work we were doing in diversity, equity and inclusion, the work we were doing on food insecurity and homelessness, it’s all now being accelerated to serve our population. This is also happening to our industries, accelerating the work we were doing in expanding collaborations and maximizing regionalism. We've seen that through our mechatronics program, where Northshore, Nunez and Delgado have come together to offer a high level of sophistication and advancement in the equipment industry and advance the manufacturing sector in partnership with key industry partners at GNO, Inc. We've actually seen the acceleration of that program in the middle of the pandemic.

Hybrid learning opportunities have allowed us to be even more nimble in working with business and industry and working with students, as well as addressing work-life balance. The pandemic brought to the forefront some things that we said we were focused on holistically and brought it to the next level.

I'm extremely optimistic about the future. We've seen higher levels of industry engagement and increased donor investment and targeted investment. And we have partnerships with organizations like the Northshore Community Foundation. Those partnerships are critical because they play the central leadership role in analyzing giving during the pandemic. Where are we seeing penetration? Where are we seeing trends? This helps all of us continue to align the work.

Early on in the pandemic, the governor charged higher ed to not only graduate our health care students, but to do it in an accelerated fashion. I know Northshore, UNO, Southeastern, Delgado and others all had an opportunity to increase investments in simulation and to push programmatic accrediting bodies to advance allowable simulation time for the student learning experience. We also partnered with our workforce investment areas to provide holistic wraparound services in partnership with business and industry, whether that was through a customized training opportunity or through incumbent worker training opportunities. I cannot say enough about the work of all of the regional higher ed partners in getting students to completion and into the workforce as quickly as possible. Hats off to our health care providers. Many of our students were allowed to continue their clinical experiences, not necessarily on the COVID-19 floors, but addressing the existing health care challenges we face in our parish and in our region.

A concern I have is a reversion to old ways post-pandemic. So I'm going to be leading and working with my colleagues, and whether it's through external stakeholders or programmatic accrediting bodies, let's garner the opportunity that came with the pandemic through innovation and learning and accelerate that growth.

Marshall Redmon: What opportunities are you seeing in the business community now, and how are you training for those and pivoting what you're teaching our young people?

Dr. William Wainwright: What I'm seeing is more sector-driven activity. We have a lot of consortium work taking place, like our maritime consortium and our advanced manufacturing consortium. I'm starting to see the consortium environment, especially around health care. I'm seeing a tremendous alignment there, which is extremely important. I would even say that Katrina helped spur some of the consortium engagement, where we understood early on as industry partners and in engaging with higher education, that both education and industry had to get out of the business of cannibalizing one another and we needed to look holistically at the pipeline. And so I'm seeing industry engage even greater with the K-12 system in advancing that pipeline, and that's a natural lead-in to the work at UNO and Northshore, as well as all of our post-secondary partners. Let's not forget about the important work being done at the private and independent colleges and universities in our region as well.

Marshall Redmon: That brings me back to Dr. Nicklow. I know there are exciting curriculum changes happening at UNO. Can you tell us about how those changes are meeting business needs, as well as how they’re addressing current racial and social issues?

Dr. John Nicklow: My philosophy on that is that higher ed has to evolve to meet the demands of the workforce. We're responsible for talent development, and we can't do that unless we know what business needs and wants and what the current market demands. We've worked hard with Quentin at the Business Alliance, with GNO, Inc., and with business leaders and business councils to pull groups together to ask what you need today and what are you going to need in five years and then 10 years. We then try to put together an evolution of programs that meets that need. Some of what's recently come out of that is an urban construction management program and an airline piloting program. Other new programs are related to business, but also align with the times we live in. We just launched a Ph.D. in justice that covers criminal justice, social justice and environmental justice and allows an individual to specialize in those areas. Chancellor Wainwright is absolutely correct that we have to work with our businesses and make sure that we accelerate, streamline and evolve programs that meet business needs. It was not that long ago that universities lived in a bubble and just did what they’d always done and offered the same programs they’d always offered. My philosophy is that those times are well gone.

Marshall Redmon: We’re living in a more holistic environment, now, where we're trying to give our people and industries a competitive advantage. Dr. Frazier, what do small businesses need to succeed here? What type of environment do we need to create and how can we help?

Dr. Trivia Frazier: For startups and small businesses such as ours, one of the challenges that a number of local institutions have been helping to mitigate is the lack of capital needed to initiate growth and then to sustain it. That has been seen on multiple levels, whether it’s access to venture capital or other, more traditional loan versus equity structures.

Another challenge for small businesses historically, although I definitely see a difference now, is workforce development. Through our relationship with Delgado, we’re working to implement the first biotechnology-focused, industry-based credential in Louisiana, which will be recognized at the state and national levels. This will accelerate training for folks who can come in for entry level positions. Workforce has been a piece that our industry within biotechnology has been speaking on for a number of years, and our university and community college partners are doing great work to address that.

The last challenge for us has been identification of adequate space and infrastructure. We've been able to identify space on the UNO campus that has turned out to be very conducive to the growth of other biotech companies and startups. We see companies that have moved into the Advanced Materials Research Institute, where we are housed, but also in the Research and Technology Park. But when we look throughout the city and the state, there are limitations with respect to adequate infrastructure that contains a combination of wet lab and some of the more commonly used business areas, like office space. That has been a challenge for growing companies.

One thing we have in Louisiana that could be used as a recruitment tool is a lower cost of operations. You can stretch your dollar further without compromising on quality. You can accomplish more in terms of those milestones that every small business lives by. Every business in general sets those KPIs and those things we have to meet to demonstrate our worth and our value to our communities, customers and markets on a local, national and global scale. Being able to stretch your dollar further in the face of these current conditions is probably the most substantial value any entity can take advantage of right now.

Marshall Redmon: Quentin, how do government and public-private partnership play into what we can do to address these challenges?

Quentin Messer: That's the question that keeps me up at night. I think there are three things government should consider doing.

First, you have to create the policy framework by which businesses know that they're welcomed and will be appreciated.

Second, you have to provide predictability and transparency. If we, as an electorate, can't see how the government is going to use our money, we're not going to be very excited about it. But if you can present the investment proposition with a transparent use for it, then it happens.

Finally, I think government is uniquely positioned to create what I call both “the knowledge infrastructure,” as well as the physical infrastructure. Dr. Frasier talked about needing physical space to safely have employees and colleagues while entertaining venture capitalists and investors. That's the physical infrastructure and frequently, we are very good about focusing on the physical infrastructure. We have the Louisiana Cancer Research Center. We have the New Orleans BioInnovation Center. Those are great physical structures. But I also think Dr. Fraser, Dr. Wainwright and Dr. Nicklow spoke about the knowledge infrastructure. How do you create a city of lifelong learners? How do you make sure that there is a continual feedback loop, so that Northshore Technical Community College knows what they need to be thinking about, not only today but also 10 or 15 years from now? This will help them figure out what curricula programming to develop, faculty to recruit and what co-curricular activities to create. It will also help to make sure that we have matriculation rates that don't vary between white and BIPOC students. How do we make sure that Dr. Frasier is connected to venture capitalists and connected to others to continue to prove that there's a viable business that has a plan for an exit strategy right here under your noses?

The reason those two infrastructures are important is because I'm frequently asked, "Why can't we be more like Austin? Why can't we be more like Nashville?” and other cities. My hypothesis is that what transformed Austin was when Dell went public in the 80s, it created 2,700 millionaires. Imagine if 2,700 people were walking around New Orleans as millionaires. Imagine 10%, or even 1%, of that number—if New Orleans had 27 new millionaires. What that creates is an entire ecosystem of startup companies, angel capitalists and venture capitalists. It creates funding such that the endowment of schools like UNO and Northshore Technical College can grow. It creates funding for nonprofits, great clients for law firms and wealth management and investment advisory opportunities for financial advisors. That's how you transform an ecosystem. That's how Austin became awesome, and you can argue the same with Nashville and HCA. Nashville was nowhere in health care IT, but HCA goes public, and now it's a health care mecca, especially in health care IT. Alliance Bernstein moved their corporate headquarters from New York down to Nashville. And so, if government makes the investment, even in bad times, and presents the use case, then you build that infrastructure that will create positive economic growth outcomes years later.

In a city that loves sports, that loves football, you understand that you build a program by having the personnel on the field, the personnel on the sideline, and the facilities. That's how you build a great college football program or a great college basketball program. And it's the same thing when building a great economy.

Marshall Redmon: It's interesting that you put it in terms of sports, because you've got to create momentum. Once you create momentum, at some point in time, there's a tipping point, which leads to a cycle of success. And that attracts people. Let me move to Dr. Wainwright and ask how higher ed is training the workforce to what is going to be a different world in five to 10 years. How are we preparing people to compete?

Dr. William Wainwright: We've often heard the quote from Wayne Gretzky, “Skate to where the puck is headed.” That's where we work closely with groups like NOLABA in ensuring leadership and helping with the convening of industry engagement to ensure that we're all staying connected. As Dr. Nicklow and I continue to navigate the pandemic, we are finding ourselves with unique opportunities, whether it's donor investments or significant investments through federal grants. One that we received was a $1.9 million grant from the Delta Regional Authority. The goal of the grant is to bring to scale apprenticeship models that train students for jobs in mechatronics. GNO, Inc. helped facilitate this with regional industry partners. As a result, we are working collectively as higher ed institutions and also in partnership with our transfer partners, like UNO and Southeastern, to look at solar, wind and other ways we can continue to engage in the future of energy, while at the same time supporting our legacy industry partners, specific to oil and gas. You see a lot of that in the work we’re doing in maritime and petrochemical.

As we look to the future to serve the needs of business and industry as higher ed, if you look at the specialization and the investment required for such innovation and curriculum development, I have every confidence you're going to see even stronger collaboration and the collapsing of silos. We do not have the single investment alone to support that type of infrastructure. We're going to lean heavily on our business alliance groups throughout the region, as well as our industry partners. You specifically mentioned robotics, and we’re currently doing that now. We just brought on our smart factory on the north shore. We also have to continue to work to prepare high school graduates for jobs that may not yet exist. We also have to continue the valiant effort of educating those children's parents on what current industry looks like and where future industry is headed. We have a role to play in that as we work through higher education.

Marshall Redmon: Dr. Nicklow, how are you collaborating with Quentin, GNO, Inc. and the business community on these issues?

Dr. John Nicklow: It's really a two-way collaboration. In one way, we're picking their brains about what businesses need. This is so we can meet their demands, but we’re also trying to figure out the next tech development or the next intellectual property that they are trying to bring to town. I’ve had some great collaborative projects with both Quentin and GNO, Inc. where we are working to sell that company on New Orleans and the talent, location and amenities we have here. That collaboration is really a two-way partnership that we can then feed into our degree programs. If Quentin brings me an industry that is considering New Orleans in a new field and that in five years, might be the next best thing, how do we make sure that we're starting to talk about that technology and teaching our students?

I always go back to my training. I’m a hydraulic engineer by trade, and I remember some new modeling techniques that were just being discussed and new platforms that I was taught in my undergraduate program. Then I went to work and realized I was the only one there that knew that. So we have to make sure that the people we’re training are on that front edge.

The other thing we do is to look at multidisciplinary training. We have more business entities coming to us that want an accountant, but they want that accountant to have some programming skills, or they want a gaming programmer with degrees in philosophy, because that makes them great storytellers. Well, you can't really do gaming without the programming skills. So we've developed a series of multidisciplinary undergraduate certificates you can do in any program. You can be an English major and pick up artificial intelligence and augmented reality training. It's not your traditional thinking in terms of one four-year program. It's really cutting across programs to make sure that we're ready for whatever is next.

Marshall Redmon: On that note, we have a question for Dr. Frazier. You mentioned attracting venture capitalists and investment as a challenge. Venture capitalists base investments in large part on their faith in the founder and the team and talent behind them. Do you think New Orleans has Silicon Valley- or Boston-caliber talent that can help attract venture capitalists’ attention? And if so, how are we organizing them, talking to them and pushing them to build?

Dr. Trivia Frazier: I would challenge that paradigm of “why can't we be like X, Y, or Z?” and say that New Orleans does not have to be like a Boston. It does not have to be like a Silicon Valley. In terms of the caliber of talent, we absolutely do have a rich environment, not only at the HBCU level and not only with the other institutions that are represented here, that is full of a number of individuals looking for an opportunity to enter markets like biotechnology, IT and many of the spaces that historically, New Orleans has not had opportunities in. The short answer to your question is yes, we do have access to that caliber of talent, understanding that in my point of view as an entrepreneur and a business owner, the goal for New Orleans should not be to strive to become a Silicon Valley. It should be to be the best New Orleans that we can be in leveraging our resources, promoting that talent, and making sure that we have the resources to not only promote that talent, but also to add value to our respective institutions so that we can attract the institutional funding or even the non-traditional funding to support our growth.

Marshall Redmon: And that will allow us to develop those other industries here. In terms of diversifying our economy, how does our positive aspect of socialization give us an advantage to achieve both greater diversity in the industries that drive this economy and with the social reckoning that we're talking about now?

Quentin Messer: People want to be in New Orleans. I'm a native of Jacksonville, Florida. I'm a New Orleanian by choice. Jacksonville struggles to attract people. It's a great town, but it's not very interesting for young people. New Orleans is interesting. People want to come here. We have to justify people's desire to be here by having an economy that allows people to not have to sacrifice their aspirations. She's too modest to say it, but Dr. Frazier would have had a much easier time raising money for her company had she left New Orleans. But she's committed. So that's why we're committed to do whatever we have to do to try to find people to invest in her, right here in New Orleans. That's what we're going to do, because she doesn't have to be here.

Our richness, our rich, diverse experiences, our BIPOC communities are all reasons people want to be here. We see it every year during Mardi Gras. In what other city can you see that type of cross section of folks come together in joy and spirit and love? But we have to translate that shared lived experience into the business sector. We have to make sure that there's representation. If folks are comfortable enough to stand shoulder to shoulder to catch throws, they have to be comfortable enough to listen to Dr. Frazier when she presents her company and not think that she's a secretary. I know Phelps has done tremendous work on the diversity, equity and inclusion space in the legal industry and Gulf Point has worked on that, too. And when we talk about diversity, it's not just BIPOC. It's veterans. It's women. It’s political diversity. It's that richness of perspective. But we do have to deal with what has been the elephant in the room and in regard to racial diversity and gender diversity, and then we have the bandwidth and credibility to look at the other things.

Dr. John Nicklow: I think it's incumbent upon our higher ed institutions to do a better job in ensuring that we have a student enrollment that is diverse, but also have a faculty and staff that has qualified diverse talent that represents the student body. If those two things occur, then we should be representative of the city in which we are located. That's one of the things we're working toward. We're not there yet. We had one of the largest incoming classes of African American students at UNO in fall 2020. That that was very intentional to recruit students, to make sure that they're supported once they're there, and to provide the support mechanisms to make sure they succeed. I think that's part of the diversity, equity and inclusion issue in business. We have to provide qualified, diverse talent to businesses so they can diversify and be more representative of the population in their city.

Dr. William Wainwright: Higher ed needs to continue to take the data dives into our student population, identify our under-represented minorities within high-demand, high-wage programs of study, and ask the hard questions as to the why. Then we need to collaborate with our industry partners in those areas to create greater access and opportunity.

Marshall Redmon: Thank you to all of our panelists for your participation. Our region is an unsung jewel, I think, and it’s great have a discussion like this and come out of it with a sense of excitement for the future.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

 

	Dr. Trivia Frazier, PhD, MBA | President/CEO | Obatala Sciences Dr. Frazier is President & CEO at Obata Sciences, a New Orleans-based organ-on-a-chip company supplying the first human-derived hydrogel for 2D and 3D cell culture. She has over 15 years of training and research experience and has been in various management positions for the past 7 years. Dr. Frazier completed her undergraduate training in physics and biomedical engineering through a dual degree program between Tulane University and Dillard University, a historically black private university in New Orleans, and her graduate training in the Biomedical Science Program at Tulane University School of Medicine. She obtained her MBA from the executive program in the Tulane University Freeman School of Business and finished in the top 10% of her class.
	Quentin Messer, Jr. | President & CEO | New Orleans Business Alliance At New Orleans Business Alliance, Quentin leads economic development strategy for Orleans Parish, along with overseeing initiatives and programs related to business attraction and retention, economic competitiveness, and small business ecosystem development. Prior to joining NOLABA, Quentin was the Assistant Secretary for Louisiana Economic Development (LED.) He holds an AB, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs from Princeton University, and a JD/MBA from Columbia University’s Law and Business Schools, respectively.
	Dr. John Nicklow | President | University of New Orleans Dr. John Nicklow is the seventh leader in the history of the University of New Orleans. Prior to his ascent to the presidency, he spent nine months as the University’s Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. President Nicklow brings to the position nearly 18 years of higher education experience as a faculty member and administrator with extensive experience in research, enrollment management, student success initiatives, fundraising, campus-wide collaborations and academic program innovation. President Nicklow has been widely recognized at the university level by the American Society of Civil Engineers and by industry for his teaching and research. He has published more than 75 articles and is the author of four books. President Nicklow earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D., in Civil Engineering from Arizona State University.
	Dr. William S. Wainwright, PhD | Chancellor | Northshore Technical Community College Dr. William Wainwright has served over 20 years in administration in various roles within the Louisiana Community and Technical College System and has served as Chancellor of NTCC since 2011. As chancellor, NTCC was recognized in the December 2015 Community College Week publication for growth, ranked top in the nation by the Brookings Institute for greatest economic value of graduates, and was recently distinguished as a Top Workplace by NOLA.com. Dr. Wainwright currently serves as Immediate Past President of The Council of Louisiana Colleges & Universities and COMBASE and currently serves his community as Immediate Past President of the Board of Family Promise of St. Tammany and board member of GNO, Inc., The St. Tammany Corporation and the Northshore Business Council.