Jerome Loughridge is the inaugural Executive Director of the Aspen-Kern Program on Leadership & Character in Higher Education, a new national initiative of the Aspen Institute. Having previously served as chief of staff at both a major public and a national private research university, Jerome will lead a cohort of US college presidents who are new to their roles as they seek to reclaim the importance of character formation for democratic citizenship and greater human flourishing.
Jerome returned to higher education after a fifteen-year career in the energy sector, where he led both private equity-backed and publicly-traded companies across North America. A native of rural Oklahoma, Jerome earned his interdisciplinary BA at Baylor University (Phi Beta Kappa) and attended Harvard University as a Truman Scholar prior to beginning his energy career as an international derivatives trader on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).
In response to 9/11, Jerome competed for a White House Fellowship – a process that resulted in his being appointed as one of twelve young professionals to the Bush Administration and his assignment as special assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In that capacity, he worked on post-war Iraqi reconstruction, splitting time between the West Wing, the Pentagon and Baghdad.
Jerome’s post-White House professional roles included leadership of portfolio companies with Connecticut-based Wexford Capital and New York-based Ziff Brothers Investments. Among those were the launch of Great White Energy Services, where he was chief operating officer; the creation of Black Mesa Energy Services, where he was president; the formation of Legend Energy Services, where he was executive chairman; and the establishment of Seventy Seven Energy from Chesapeake Oilfield Services, where he served as president of Great Plains Oilfield and remained as an executive through the company’s acquisition. Jerome served as CEO of NextStream, a joint venture between GE-Baker Hughes and private partners to bring new technology to the upstream energy sector. Jerome has held board positions with companies in Dongying, China, and Alberta, Canada, in addition to various firms in the U.S.
In March 2019, while serving as an energy-sector executive, Jerome was nominated by Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, and unanimously confirmed by the Senate, as Secretary of Health and Mental Health in order to bring business principles to the work of government agencies. In his volunteer Cabinet role, he was responsible for driving Medicaid expansion in the State and eventually helped lead the Governor’s Covid-19 Task Force responsible for Oklahoma’s response to the global coronavirus pandemic.
Jerome is currently completing a Master of Studies at the University of Oxford where he is reading practical ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Uehiro Institute Oxford. He chairs the Honors College board at Baylor University and regularly teaches at the collegiate, community and international levels, primarily in East Africa and Latin America, on faith, public policy and leadership. Jerome and his wife live on an acreage outside Oklahoma City and have two boys.