Walter J. Leger III

President and CEO, New Orleans & Company

Walt Leger is President and CEO at New Orleans & Company, the official destination marketing and sales organization for the New Orleans tourism industry.  Boasting 1100 member businesses, New Orleans & Company’s goal is to cultivate and maintain a virtuous cycle between the businesses and attractions that make up the tourism industry, the visitors who invest in those business and attractions, and the city’s residents and communities that benefit from tourism.

Walt Leger has been widely recnognized across the state of Louisiana as a strategic thinker and fierce advocate.  First as an Assistant District Attorney in New Orleans and later as an attorney with the law firm of Leger & Shaw, Walt has been a zealous advocate for his clients and victims of violent crime for almost 20 years. 

Walt was elected in the fall of 2007 to the Louisiana House of Representatives for District 91, representing neighborhoods across the City of New Orleans.  He was re-elected twice without opposition in 2011 and 2015. In 2012, he was elected by acclamation to serve as the Speaker Pro Tempore of the Louisiana House of Representatives, the youngest member to ever serve in this 2nd highest ranking position in the Louisiana House, a role in which he served again from 2016-2020.  Walt left the Legislature in 2020 due to term limits.  Leger remains actively involved in community and civic activities including serving on the Board of the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, GNO, Inc., LSU Ogden Honors College, Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, the Louisiana Institute for Children in Families, the Council on Criminal Justice and serves as an Adjunct Law Professor at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans.

Leger currently resides in New Orleans with his wife, Danielle and daughters Cate and Caroline.