Board of Directors
Sean O'Keefe
Former Administrator of NASA
The Honorable Sean O'Keefe was the seventh Chancellor of the Louisiana State University and A&M College finishing his term in early 2008.
Prior to serving as Chancellor, O'Keefe served on four separate occasions as a presidential appointee. Most recently, until February 2005, he served as the 10th Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He joined President George W. Bush's Administration as Deputy Assistant to the President and as the Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget until December 2001.
O'Keefe was the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy, an endowed chair at the Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He also served as the Director of National Security Studies, a partnership of Syracuse University and Johns Hopkins University for delivery of executive education programs. Appointed to these positions in 1996, he was previously Professor of Business Administration and Assistant to the Senior Vice President for Research, and Dean of the Graduate School at the Pennsylvania State University.
Appointed as the Secretary of the Navy in July 1992 by President George H.W. Bush, O'Keefe previously served as Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Defense since 1989. Before joining then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney's Pentagon management team in these capacities, he served on the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations staff for eight years, and was Staff Director of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. His public service began in 1978 upon selection as a Presidential Management Intern.
Mr. O'Keefe is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, a Fellow of the International Academy of Astronautics and member of the Naval Postgraduate School Board of Advisors. During his academic postings, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Wolfson College of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, a member of the Naval Postgraduate School's civil-military relations seminar team, and conducted seminars for the Strategic Studies Group at Oxford University. He served on the national security panel to devise the 1988 Republican platform and was a member of the 1985 Kennedy School of Government program for national security executives at Harvard University.
In 1993, President H.W. Bush and Secretary Cheney presented him the Distinguished Public Service Award. He was the 1999 faculty recipient of the Syracuse University Chancellor's Award for Public Service; recipient of the Department of the Navy's Public Service Award in December 2000; and has been awarded five honorary doctorate degrees from several prestigious educational institutions. In 2003 and 2004, he was recognized and honored by the Irish American Magazine as one of the Top 100 Irish Americans.
Mr. O'Keefe earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1977 from Loyola University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and his Master of Public Administration in 1978 from the Syracuse University's Maxwell School. He is married to Laura McCarthy O'Keefe, and they have three children Lindsey, Jonathan and Kevin.
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