Craigslist Foundation President, CEO featured Winter Commencement speaker

Lynn Luckow, Craigslist Foundation president and CEO, UND graduate and Hettinger native, will deliver the commencement addresses at the undergraduate and graduate Winter Commencement ceremonies Dec. 17 at the Chester Fritz Auditorium.

Commencement for graduate and professional degrees begins at 10 a.m. and the undergraduate commencement will be held at 2 p.m. There are 757 eligible degree candidates, approximately 560 undergraduates. Both ceremonies will be webcast and available through a link on UND’s home page.

“UND, to me, was a central bridge from a small town without many connections to various fields and professions,” recalls Luckow, who directs the philanthropic arm of craigslist.org, the seventh most frequented Internet site globally.

Currently living in San Francisco, Luckow graduated from UND in 1971 with a BA in English and German. He earned a master’s degree in higher education administration at Indiana University, Bloomington. In the early years of his career, Luckow served as UND’s director of conferences and institutes, assistant director of high school relations, and as an academic advisor.

“When we grow up with in North Dakota, we wonder how we stack up to the world,” he notes. “UND was a great confidence builder for me and has certainly been key to my career. I have a longstanding love affair with the University of North Dakota and what it does for students.”

Luckow said his commencement addresses will cover themes of community, what it means to build a civil society and how technology can power relationships.

The Craigslist Foundation provides people and organizations easy access to the tools and knowledge they need to improve the quality of life in their communities and neighborhoods. It supports the belief that healthy, vibrant cities, towns, and counties are the key to healthy, democratic societies.

Throughout his career, Luckow has worked in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors. Position he’s held include president and CEO of Jossey-Bass Publisher; president and CEO of Northern California Grantmakers, a coalition of 180 philanthropic foundations in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay area; and director of business, management and executive programs at the University of California, San Diego.

An avid lifelong learner, Luckow studied organizational psychology, management, and leadership at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, Calif., and engaged in self-directed learning around the importance of community in everyday life.

As an expert in social innovation, Luckow has served on, or consulted to, over 40 nonprofit boards, including chairing the board of San Francisco’s Project Open Hand, and the national boards of Chanticleer and the National 4-H Council, for which he was honored as the nation’s top nonprofit board chairman by the National Assembly of Health and Human Service Organizations in 2000.

Luckow currently serves as senior advisor to the Kinsey Institute, senior advisor to the Noyce Foundation and dean of the Noyce Leadership Institute, and as a board member of Fifty Crows Foundation, Talking Eyes Media, and the Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence at Indiana University. He is also on the advisory boards of YouthGive, City of Dreams and World Arts West.

Honors Luckow has received include the Distinguished Alumni Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Education from Indiana University; the Maxwell Anderson Award for Outstanding Achievement in Arts and Letters from UND; an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Manhattanville College; and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Golden Gate University in recognition of his charitable work in the San Francisco Bay Area, and his contributions to higher education worldwide.

— Patrick Miller, writer/editor, University Relations, 777-2412, patrick.miller@und.edu.