LSU Alumni Spotlight: David Steiner

New U.S. Postmaster General is LSU Business alum

David Steiner had been happily retired for eight years. After helping turn around a Fortune 500 company under investigation, he had earned his weeks of traveling and golf outings. When a former colleague contacted him to gauge his interest in becoming the next United States Postmaster General, Steiner and his wife, Judy, talked about it. They agreed the move made no sense.

Yet, his colleague’s last words kept coming back to Steiner. You would be serving your country.

Timing is everything. Weeks later, while Steiner and his wife joined a group of friends from their LSU days on a tour of the beaches at Normandy, France, Steiner received a call asking him to interview for the position.

“I was standing there, in the American Cemetery in Normandy, looking at 20,000 graves of soldiers who had died for our country,” explains Steiner, who acquiesced to the interview.

On May 9, the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors appointed Steiner to be the 76th Postmaster General and CEO of the United States Postal Service (USPS). He assumed that role on July 15.

Established by federal law, the selection of the Postmaster General rests solely with the Presidentially appointed and Senate confirmed Governors of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors, who oversee the Postal Service as an independent establishment of the executive branch. 

As an independent federal establishment, USPS is mandated to be self-financing and to serve every American community through the affordable, reliable, and secure delivery of mail and packages to 169 million addresses, often seven days a week.

“When you look at the United States Postal Service, it’s older than our country,” says Steiner, noting that the first Postmaster General was Benjamin Franklin. “July 22 will be the 250^th anniversary of the post office. We have to honor that long history.”

While Steiner acknowledges the USPS is the delivery of choice for the last mile in the United States, he recognizes its challenges. USPS has 650,000 employees and $90 billion in annual revenue.

“FedEx only has 500,000 employees worldwide with the same revenue,” says Steiner, who has served on the FedEx board since 2020.

“I was in a bit of a similar position at Waste Management,” adds Steiner, who served as deputy chief counsel, chief counsel, CFO, and CEO at Waste Management, retiring in 2016. “I call it a burning platform. You have to get the fire out first and stabilize the platform in the short term. The post office has a long history of amazing people – it was the internet of its time. It was the way people communicated. It was the most important function in the government. I would love to bring that back – bring back pride in the workforce, the ideal of serving your fellow man. Changing the culture is a longer-term goal.”

Steiner says running a company is like running a family.

“The thing you want to do is talk to the folks who are doing the work,” he says. “I’ll be spending a lot of time on the road.”

Steiner (1982 BACH BUS) received his law degree from UCLA and practiced law in California and New Orleans before moving to Houston and the position at Waste Management. He serves on the E.J. Ourso College of Business Dean’s Advisory Council. A California native, his family moved to Algiers when he was 10. He met his wife, the former Judy Schott (1982 BACH BUS), a CPA, at LSU. They have three sons.

Steiner maintains he’s been luckier than most. He jokes about turning down a job at Enron for the Waste Management position.

“The luckiest thing that happened to me was I was born in the United States,” he says. “I won the lottery just by being born here. And now I have a chance to give back to my country.”