Sean O'Keefe...   Keynote Speaker

The Honorable Sean O’Keefe is the seventh Chancellor of the Louisiana State University and A&M College. He was appointed to the position on December 16, 2004, and assumed office February 21, 2005.

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.

Prior to joining the Bush Administration, 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 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.

Sean 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 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.

Most recently O’Keefe was named among the Irish American Magazine’s “Stars of the South,” was elected to the Louisiana Political Hall of Fame (to be inducted in January 2007), and was the recipient of the 2005 Navigator Award, presented by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.  In February 2005 he was the recipient of the Honorary Engineer of the Year Award, presented by the Engineers’ Council.

O’Keefe currently serves on the Board of Directors for E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, Battelle Memorial Institute and Sensis Corporation.  He also serves on the Board of Advisors for the Partnership for Public Service, Naval Postgraduate School and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

He is the author of several journal articles and contributing author of Keeping the Edge: Managing Defense for the Future released in October 2000. In 1998, he co-authored The Defense Industry in the Post-Cold War Era: Corporate Strategies and Public Policy Perspectives.

Sean 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.