On October 23rd 2022, Jacques Lauriac, long time board member of Partners for Development (PfD) and co-founder with Joel Montague of our predecessor organization, American Friends of Action Internationale Contre la Faim, passed away peacefully at age 94 in his hometown of Biarritz in southwestern France.

After earning a B.S. in Engineering from the University of Paris in the late 1940s Jacques moved to the USA where he became a U.S. citizen, served in the U.S. Army in Korea, and then earned an M.A. in International Management from Thunderbird University in Arizona in the early 1950s. Jacques then joined the American humanitarian organization Cooperative for Relief & Assistance Everywhere (CARE) and over the course of 26 years with them served as a country director in many countries, including Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, Libya, Haiti, and Vietnam.

In the 1980s when the French relief organization International Action Against Hunger decided to open an American chapter it tapped Jacques to create the legal and administrative structure for that, including formation of the first Board. In this regard, Jacques’s first recruit was his former CARE colleague and long-time friend, Joel Montague. The first office of American Friends of AICF was in New York City where friends Valerie Parr and Bill Mazurek helped out greatly in terms of space and other important areas.

After Jacques left as first Executive Director of American Friends of AICF in latter 1991 he was thereafter instrumental in the start-up of our work in Cambodia and also took on temporary management positions both there and in Bosnia & Herzegovina until we could place more permanent staff. Jacques also helped on exploratory trips to Afghanistan and to Haiti.

In 1996, a legal agreement with AICF led to the creation of Partners for Development with retention of then staff and programs and several trustees. Joel Montague served as first board Chair of PfD with Jacques staying on for many years on the Board and then serving several years after that as an Advisory Member. With more free time, Jacques was also able to devote more energy to painting.

Jacques returned to Biarritz in 2016 around which time his long-time companion and friend to PfD, Magali Alleaume, unfortunately passed away.

Jacques was charismatic, blessed with enormous energy and intelligence that he used in working on behalf of underserved persons around the world for more than four decades.

PfD will futher honor Jacques Lauriac with a Celebration of Life on Saturday, January 7th 2023.