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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 29, 2009
Contact: Christina Stephens, christina.stephens@la.gov
Rainwater joins governor’s staff, Keegan named LRA executive director
On Dec. 23, Governor Jindal appointed Louisiana Recovery Authority Executive Director Paul Rainwater as his new deputy chief of staff. Robin Keegan, LRA deputy director, will become the agency’s new executive director effective Jan. 1, 2010.
Rainwater had served as the LRA head since Jindal took office in Jan. 2008.
Keegan returned to Louisiana from New York in 2005 following hurricanes Katrina and Rita to serve as the LRA’s director of economic and workforce development policy. In this role, she worked with other state agencies to develop a $350 million portfolio of economic and workforce programs to meet the immediate priorities of economic recovery. In April 2008, she was appointed deputy director of the agency.
Previously, Keegan was the deputy director of the Center for an Urban Future, a nonpartisan policy organization dedicated to independent, fact-based research about critical economic and workforce issues affecting New York’s future. In addition to overseeing management and development for the organization, she led the Center’s research on arts and economic development.
Keegan was a lead author on Creative New York, a groundbreaking study that provided the first comprehensive assessment of New York’s creative sector, and also co-authored the Center’s 2002 report, The Creative Engine, an assessment of neighborhood-based arts and economic development in New York City.
With a master’s degree in urban planning from Columbia University, Keegan started her work in cultural planning and economic development in the mid 1990s as the co-leader of Create Baton Rouge, a two–year cultural planning process for Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Created in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) is the coordinating and planning body leading the most extensive rebuilding effort in American history. The central point for hurricane recovery in Louisiana, the LRA works closely with the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) and partners with state and federal agencies to oversee more than $20 billion worth of programs, speed the pace of rebuilding, remove hurdles and red tape and ensure that Louisiana recovers safer and stronger than before.
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