Lenny Lemoine is the president of the Lemoine Company, one of the most respected, full-service general contracting and construction management firms in the Southeast. Lemoine Company projects range from minor interior renovations to complex commercial, public, and industrial endeavors.
After joining Cottonport Lumber Company Inc. as its administrative and financial manager, Lemoine eventually became its executive vice president and chief operating officer, developing operational control systems for consistent growth management and geographic diversification.
Lemoine, who received his bachelor’s from LSU in 1979, oversaw Cottonport’s relocation to Lafayette, La., in 1983, and its rebranding as the Lemoine Company. He is an active member of the Acadiana community and is affiliated with numerous professional and non-profit organizations. He has served as president and as a member on the board of directors for the Pelican Chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors. He serves on the board of directors and executive committee for the Community Foundation of Acadiana, Acadiana Marine Institute, Lourdes Hospital Foundation and Oakbourne Country Club. Additionally, Lemoine appeared in the LSU Flores MBA Distinguished Speaker Series in 2011.
Don Chachere is the president and chief executive officer of Tony Chachere’s Creole Foods Inc., which offers a variety of cookbooks, seasoning blends, dinner mixes, marinades, sauces, batters, and frozen items that are prepared with Chachere’s products.
Chachere, who is the grandson of Tony Chachere, is a third-generation owner and operator of Tony Chachere’s Creole Foods. He first joined the company in 1981, as a plant manager and worked his way up through all phases of the business as it continued to grow. In 1990, Chachere assumed the role of executive vice president until 2001, when he took over the role of president of the company. During his tenure, the Tony Chachere’s brand has nearly quadrupled in value. The original seasoning blend has cemented its position as the world’s favorite Creole seasoning, and the injectable marinades have become the top selling products in their category nationally.
Chachere attended LSU for three years while working toward a bachelor’s in marketing and ultimately obtained a bachelor’s in business management from the University of Phoenix. Chachere is actively involved in his community, having served as chairman of the Capital Building Campaign and as a director on the Foundation Trust Board for Opelousas Catholic School. He also currently serves as a lector, altar server, and Eucharistic minister at Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church.
Teri Fontenot, a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, is the president and chief executive officer of Woman's Hospital, a Level III regional referral hospital for obstetrics, newborn, and women's cancer care. Prior to being appointed to her current position in 1996, she was Woman's Hospital’s executive vice president in charge of the hospital's internal operations.
Fontenot has served on the board of the American Hospital Association, completed a six-year term on the Advisory Committee on Research on Women's Health for the National Institutes of Health, served as chair of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber in 2000, and served as chair of the board of the Louisiana Hospital Association in 2002. She completed six years of service in 2009, as a member of the board of directors of the Sixth District Federal Reserve Bank, also chairing the Audit Committee. Fontenot has served 10 years on the board of the Hospital Billing & Collection Service and is the chair-elect of the American Hospital Association Board of Trustees and the Chief Executive Officers Committee of the American College of Healthcare Executives.
In 1997, the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report named Fontenot to the inaugural list of the city's most influential women, and she received the YWCA's Woman of Achievement Award. She was named to Modern Healthcare magazine's 2005 inaugural list of the Top 25 Women in Healthcare, and she was presented the Louisiana Hospital Association’s Golden Pelican President's Award in 2010. Fontenot, who received her bachelor's in accounting from the University of Mississippi in 1979, and her master's in business administration from Northeast Louisiana University, appeared in the 2010 LSU Flores MBA Distinguished Speaker Series. A former Dean's Advisory Council member, Fontenot is also a certified public accountant.
Matthew Magnuson is the president, chief technology officer and co-founder of St. James Technologies. He is also the product director and co-founder of Harbor Telematics. St. James Technologies helps make the dreams of technological entrepreneurs come to life with a team of engineers, programmers, and a manufacturing facility. Harbor Telematics is a Web-based real-time monitoring alert system that is fully customizable.
Magnuson co-founded St. James Technologies while he was an undergraduate student at Southeastern Louisiana University. The electronics design firm, which designs products to meet the needs of the stevedoring, shipping industry, has produced a variety of remote sensing and embedded products in diverse areas such as environment sampling, remote equipment monitoring, and medical devices. In 2010, one of St. James Technologies creations, a remote sensing platform designed for monitoring mobile harbor cranes, was spun off into Harbor Telematics. The latter has customers throughout the United States, Central America, and Europe. Plans are to expand Harbor Telematics into Asia by the end of 2013.
While working toward his degree in computer science at SLU, Magnuson pursued interests in ubiquitous computer prototypes, robotics, and worked in various areas of the computer field. Since graduation, he and his company have received numerous awards within the area of technological development.
Brandon Landry and Jack Warner are the co-founders and co-owners of Last In Concepts LLC, which operates eight restaurants and employs 770 people in the south Louisiana cities of Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and New Orleans. Original concepts that fall under the Last In Concepts umbrella are Walk-On's Bistreaux & Bar, The Roux House, Happy's Irish Pub, Schlitz & Giggles, and Walk-On's Catering.
Landry and Warner played collegiate basketball at LSU in the late ‘90s as walk-ons and discussed the concept for their first restaurant, Walk-On's, on a bus trip coming home from an away game. This led to the duo formulating a business plan for a class, which earned them a C letter grade. Undaunted, Landry and Warner began to gain knowledge of the restaurant business by working at various local eateries.
After finally structuring a deal with the Small Business Association through Fidelity Bank that assisted Landry and Warner in securing an anchor spot in what was then a new development near campus, Landry and Warner opened their first Walk-On's location in September 2003.
Christel Slaughter is a principal of SSA Consultants, a Baton Rouge-based, nationally recognized management consulting and organizational development firm established in 1970, that has provided services to hundreds of organizations across the U.S. and Canada. Its clients include Fortune 200 publicly traded, privately held, not-for-profit, and government organizations.
Slaughter earned a doctorate in systems management and organization design from LSU in 1979, and began her professional career as a faculty member of LSU, where she spent seven years before joining SSA in 1983. Throughout her career with SSA Consultants, Slaughter has been instrumental in guiding and implementing strategic direction for hundreds of organizations, regionally and worldwide. Some of her work has included the cultural and organizational transformation of a publicly traded community bank, designing and implementing an award-winning customer service program for a large healthcare institution, developing and conducting a diversity awareness program for a multi-national chemical plant, and designing integration strategies for the state of Louisiana’s multi-billion dollar coastal protection and restoration efforts.
Slaughter is a member of the LSU E. J. Ourso College Dean’s Advisory Council. She was inducted into the LSU E. J. Ourso College of Business Hall of Distinction in 2009, and is an adjunct faculty member for the LSU Flores MBA Program. Slaughter appeared in the LSU Flores MBA Distinguished Speaker Series in 2012.