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## Deidre Deculus Robert

### Director of State Office Operations

Deidre Deculus Robert has over two decades of legal, administrative, and executive management experience in local, state, and federal governance. She is honored to serve in the Biden-Harris Administration as a presidential appointee, first leading the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development Office in Louisiana as state director and now as the director of state office operations for Rural Development, based in Washington, D.C.

As state director of Rural Development for Louisiana, she and her staff worked to support rural communities across Louisiana by administering programs for affordable housing, community facilities, and the business industry. Their relentless outreach efforts across Louisiana resulted in an expansion of knowledge and investments numbering 4,462 and totaling $972 million that will deliver help to small businesses to access new and better markets, grow modern infrastructure, promote a healthy environment and affordable housing, and create equitable access to quality healthcare, jobs, and capital. 

A native of Mamou, Louisiana, her legal career began in the Parish Attorney’s Office of the City of Baton Rouge-Parish of East Baton Rouge as an assistant city prosecutor. During her eleven (11) years with the city-parish, she advanced to become the first African American female section chief. Thereafter, she worked for over six years as an assistant attorney general with the Louisiana Department of Justice, where she served as deputy director of the Public Protection Division, deputy director of the Litigation Division, and special litigation counsel assigned to defend the Louisiana Judiciary. 

Previously, Robert served as general counsel of the Southern University and A&M College System, the only HBCU college system in the country, wherein she served as the chief legal counsel for the president-chancellor and five campuses that make up the system. Prior to accepting her presidential appointment as state director for Louisiana, she served as the executive counsel for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. Her responsibilities included managing legislative affairs on the federal, state, and local levels; supervising the innovative procurement, legal and internal audit sections of the agency; as well as managing the human resources legal matters for the agency. She collaborated with state and local partners to advance infrastructure needs including rail, broadband, and bridges throughout the state. 

Director Robert’s personal mission of service to others is displayed not only in her work in rural communities providing education and access to the resources of USDA, but in her service through local, state, and national civic organizations. Among other things, she recently served as the president of the Louisiana Bar Foundation, which exist to preserve, honor, and improve our system of justice by funding, developing, or otherwise promoting efforts to enhance the legal profession, increase public understanding of the legal system, and advance the reality of equal justice under the law. She and her husband James have a ranch in Glynn, Louisiana, and their two sons attend LSU and Southern University, respectively.