UL Lafayette Foundation

The foundation is led by CEO John I. Blohm, with Karl Meche serving as Chief Financial and Administrative Officer. The Board of Trustees, chaired by Donna Landry, provides oversight. The President of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, E. Joseph Savoie, sits on the board as an ex-officio trustee, ensuring alignment between the foundation's investment activity and the university's priorities.

The foundation is a legally separate 501(c)(3) nonprofit that serves as the university's primary gift-receiving and asset-management arm. It holds title to donated assets — cash, securities, real property, and intellectual property — and invests them to generate supplemental income for university programs. The university president's ex-officio board seat creates a formal governance link without making the foundation a university department.

The foundation's strategy spans buyout, distressed debt, CLOs, mezzanine, early- and late-stage venture, natural resources, and secondaries. It also holds direct real estate in Lafayette — including the Hilliard Art Museum site, its own office building, a parking garage, and two former health-system and diocese tracts. A student-managed public-equity portfolio operates as both an educational tool and a small sleeve of the fund.

The foundation uses both approaches. It commits to external funds across venture, private equity, private credit, and hedge fund strategies — the 'fund of funds' and 'CLO' tags in its investment profile confirm commingled-vehicle participation. Simultaneously, it holds direct title to multiple Lafayette real-estate parcels and maintains a student-managed equity portfolio, indicating a hybrid model that blends allocator and principal-investor behavior.

The Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum, located at 101 Girard Park Drive in Lafayette, is both physically and legally a foundation asset. The building and the museum's permanent collection of 18th- through 21st-century works are held by the foundation. This makes the foundation a direct steward of a cultural institution in addition to its financial-portfolio function.

The UL Lafayette Foundation manages donated private assets, not necessarily the entirety of the university's state-appropriated or tuition-derived financial reserves. Louisiana public universities typically maintain separate operating funds under state oversight. The foundation's role is to invest and steward private gifts specifically — the pool that supplements faculty chairs, scholarships, and program budgets beyond what Baton Rouge allocates.

As a permanent endowment vehicle, the foundation operates with an indefinite time horizon — it does not face redemption pressures from donors. Its portfolio mix, which includes illiquid private equity, venture, real estate, and distressed credit, confirms a long-duration posture consistent with that perpetual mandate. The foundation's annual distributions to the university for supplemental salaries and program support set a practical liquidity requirement that the portfolio's public-equity and private-credit sleeves likely serve.