University of New Orleans graduate, retired businessman and higher education champion Barry LeBlanc will serve as UNO’s spring 2011 commencement speaker on Friday, May 20 at 7 p.m. at the Lakefront Arena.
LeBlanc dedicated most of his 35-year professional career to building food and life science companies in Louisiana. He developed a line of patented prescription medical foods to address chronic diseases such as depression, dementia and diabetes; financed and constructed a fully integrated pharmaceutical development lab and manufacturing facility; and built a publically traded specialty eye-care pharmaceutical business. In the specialty food market, he helped commercialize a Louisiana-based food technology that was later sold to an international food company.
LeBlanc’s civic and community involvement has focused primarily on higher education and bioscience. At the University of New Orleans, he currently serves on the Board of the UNO Foundation, and has served as president of the UNO International Alumni Association and on the Chancellor’s Strategic Planning Task Force. LeBlanc devotes a substantial portion of his time to a not-for-profit initiative he and his wife recently began. Students4HIGHER helps qualified, first-generation, low-socioeconomic high-school graduates earn a college degree in four years at a local public university. The program began in the fall of 2010 at UNO.
A lifelong resident of Louisiana, LeBlanc earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of New Orleans, and later earned the designation as a Certified Public Accountant. He also obtained an M.B.A. from Loyola University New Orleans.