Managing Director
Phillip LaFargue joined Emergent Method in March 2014 after serving as senior vice president of marketing for the Baton Rouge Area Chamber (BRAC), one of the nation’s leading economic development organizations, and before that, director of communications at Center for Planning Excellence. Phillip also worked as a senior design associate at Matter, a strategic design firm in Atlanta, where he helped the Marriott Corporation develop a new trip-planning experience and worked with the WK Kellogg Foundation to develop an alternative pathway to meaningful employment for out-of-school youth.
Phillip’s expertise lies in strategic planning and project management, multi- stakeholder outreach and decision-making processes, marketing, branding, design thinking and qualitative research. He has a track record of bringing skilled executive leadership, dynamic communications, and structured thought processes to help companies and organizations of various sizes develop products, services, and plans for maximum impact.
Phillip is an accomplished consulting professional with expertise in end-user product and service design, and experiences that include working with The Water Institute of the Gulf, a Baton Rouge-based nonprofit with global reach, to lead communications; the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, with whom he has led outreach efforts and produced videos and other materials to tell meaningful stories about efforts to protect and restore Coastal Louisiana; Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, where he ran internal communications strategy for the health system as it transitioned its inpatient Electronic Medical Record System; and with businesses and organizations large and small, such as The Arts Council, Delta Land Services, and Associated Grocers, to lead their strategic planning efforts. Phillip also led employer outreach efforts on behalf of Louisiana Economic Development in support of its Louisiana Job Connection program and has helped re-imagine service delivery models rooted through user-centered design processes for organizations like Code for America and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and Steelcase, Inc., in Grand Rapids Michigan.
Phillip holds a Master of Design in Human-Centered Communication Design from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Louisiana State University.
On top of his client involvement, Phillip sits on the executive board committees of Leadership Baton Rouge Alumni and the Baton Rouge Gallery and Center for Contemporary Arts, and recently completed terms as a board member for the Big River Economic and Agricultural Development Alliance (BREADA) and the Manship Theatre at the Shaw Center for the Arts. In addition, Phillip was named to the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report’s 2012 “Forty Under 40” class of rising stars in the Baton Rouge area. He is also co-founder of the GRAMMY-winning Louisiana-based record label, Valcour Records.
