Leslie Jacobs

Leslie Rosenthal Jacobs (born 1959, New Orleans, Louisiana) is an education reform advocate, business executive, and philanthropist. Born in New Orleans and a graduate of Cornell University, she built her family's small, independent insurance agency into one of the largest in the South, before merging the Rosenthal Agency with Hibernia National Bank (now Capital One). While President of Rosenthal Agency, Jacobs worked with the business community and the legislature to create the Louisiana Workers Compensation Corporation (LWCC) and served on its inaugural board of directors. The LWCC solved a state workers compensation crisis and today Louisiana has competitive and stable workers compensation rates. She went on to become a co-founder of Strategic Comp, a workers compensation insurance company that sold to Great American in 2008.

Jacobs has been active in the New Orleans business and startup community serving as past chair of GNO, Inc., a non-profit economic development corporation dedicated to cultivating the Greater New Orleans area's economy, the vice-chair of the and CEO and co-founders of the New Orleans Startup Fund, a nonprofit venture fund focused on business creation and innovation in the 10-parish Greater New Orleans region.

Jacobs has been engaged in education reform for more than 35 years. She began as a business partner with an elementary school, served as an elected member of the Orleans Parish School Board, and then, as a member of the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) for twelve years, first appointed by Governor Foster (R) and then re-appointed by Governor Blanco (D). Jacobs is credited as one of the prime architects for reform of the Louisiana Public Schools throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Jacobs was honored as the “Twenty People Who Influenced Louisiana from 1981-2001” by Louisiana Life Magazine in 2001, and Forbes awarded Jacobs the “World's Most Powerful Educators” award in 2011. Provided by Wikipedia