There are awards you nominate people for. There are awards decided by votes, ballots and popularity. And then there are the ones you just know. When my mom and I decided Living in Parish Magazine would name a Man of the Year, we knew we wanted it to mean something different. We were looking for someone whose service to Livingston Parish was not confined to one organization, one project or one moment in the spotlight. Someone who wakes up, looks around and asks where he can help, even when nobody asked him to. We kept coming back to the same person: Steve Bernard.
If you spend much time around Livingston Parish, particularly anywhere involving the Chamber, Denham Springs Main Street, Kiwanis, the library, Spotlight Theater, a fundraiser, a community event or just about anything requiring somebody to show up and get their hands dirty, chances are you have seen Steve. Usually, he isn’t standing around waiting to be recognized. He’s working. He is arriving early, staying late, carrying something, setting something up, taking something down or asking the question every event organizer loves to hear: “What do you need?” It is something Steve himself only really recognized about his personality in recent years. “I found out in the last five years, I love to volunteer,” he told me. “There’s this book on love languages, and one of them is service. I think that’s mine. I’ll go work all day for you.” And that might be the simplest explanation for why Steve Bernard is our 2026 Man of the Year.
Born and raised in Baton Rouge, Steve attended St. Thomas More, Broadmoor Junior High and Belaire High School before spending two years at LSU. His career in technology began almost accidentally in the early 1980s, when personal computers were still mysterious machines to most people. Steve was working at a hardware store at the time, while his brother was studying information science at LSU. His father happened to be friends with the manager of a computer business, and after one particularly frustrating day at the hardware store, Steve called his dad and asked if they might have a place for him. They did, although his first job was mostly hauling equipment back and forth from storage. Then somebody let Steve get his hands on a computer. “I love techie stuff,” he said. “Anything with buttons.” He brought a computer home, read the DOS manual and started teaching himself. Before long, he had figured out inventory software well enough that when a manager asked whether they had any monitors in storage, Steve could immediately tell him they had seven. His employers noticed. They sent him to IBM school, and Steve has been working in technology ever since.
Eventually, that path led him to Client Technology Services, the company he owns today. Even the name tells you something about Steve. When he and his partners left their previous company, Steve was adamant that he wasn’t going to solicit the clients he had worked with there. The clients had other ideas. They already had his cell phone number, and when they learned Steve had left, they began calling. One longtime client told him plainly, “We’re going with you.” Steve tried to explain that he wasn’t asking them to follow him. They didn’t care. They trusted him. “So that’s how we got ‘client’ in the name,” he said. “Their clients were first, and it had to be technology.” Client Technology Services has since become recognizable for its brightly colored narwhal mascot, Chip, although Steve admits he wasn’t initially sold on the idea. Then he watched Elf. “I called Orhan and said, ‘All you had to do was open with the narwhal like the one in Elf. I’d have been sold.’” Somebody later gave Steve an even better explanation for the mascot: a narwhal is rare, just like “an IT guy you can talk to.” For a man whose entire career has revolved around technology, Steve’s success has always seemed to have considerably more to do with people.
That includes Shannon Bernard, his wife of 35 years. The two met through mutual friends after Steve was repeatedly told there was a “nice Christian girl” he needed to meet. Steve, who had been raised Catholic but admits he wasn’t exactly in his church-going era at the time, wasn’t entirely convinced. “I was like, ‘Oh man, I’m about to have to quit swearing, quit drinking and stuff,’” he laughed. Eventually, he agreed to help Shannon with a computer problem, which is perhaps the most Steve Bernard way possible for a love story to begin. Ice cream followed, then a movie, and, as Steve put it, “then it was a date ever since.” They married June 8, 1991. After living in Baton Rouge for a while, Steve and Shannon always knew Livingston Parish would eventually be home. Shannon had been raised here, her father owned property here and they wanted the schools and community for their family. Eventually, they built on family property and raised their son, Chase.
Their family later grew in a way neither of them had exactly planned. Friends were completing foster care training because a child related to their family was entering the system, and they asked Steve and Shannon if they wanted to take the classes too. They did, although they never got in much of a hurry to finish the paperwork. Then came a phone call. There was a six-week-old baby girl who needed somewhere to go. Her name was Bella. Steve and Shannon said yes, and Bella never left. Their experience with foster care introduced Steve to an entirely different side of the community and eventually led him to Family Village. Years ago, the organization was holding a volunteer day, and Steve asked Bella if she wanted to go with him. Bella, who loves to organize, claimed the shoes and spent the entire day working on them. Steve told her if she loved it that much, they could come back every week. Steve kept coming back, started attending events and eventually was asked to serve on the board. Once again, he had shown up to help for a day and somehow turned it into years of service.
That pattern repeats itself throughout Steve’s life. He served on the Livingston Parish Library Board after learning about it through Kiwanis and later helped restart the Friends of the Livingston Parish Library System as a nonprofit. His enthusiasm for the library was never limited to sitting through board meetings. When he learned about the library’s book festival, he asked whether board members attended. Not really, he was told. Then he asked a different question: could board members volunteer? “Absolutely.” Steve’s response was immediate: “What time do you want me there?” He even challenged his fellow board members to at least stop by the festival and see what was happening. Last year, when the library held a Renaissance-themed event, Steve and Shannon were made king and queen. What Steve thought might be a quick appearance turned into walking around, taking pictures, meeting exhibitors and, in Steve’s case, enthusiastically knighting people. Naturally, he loved every minute of it.
Then there is Denham Springs Main Street, Spotlight Theater, Walker Kiwanis, Family Village and the Livingston Parish Chamber of Commerce. As a Chamber ambassador, Steve discovered another role that suited him perfectly because it essentially gave him permission to walk into an event and ask if anyone needed help. He began arriving early for Chamber functions to help set up and staying afterward to clean. Eventually, after doing that enough times, he figured he might as well join the gala committee too. “You need something done, let’s do it,” he said. Last year’s red carpet gala became one of his favorites because he got to interview people as they waited in line, talking to them, getting them excited and making sure they were ready to have a good time. “I like meeting people,” Steve said. “Everything to me is networking.”
At 62, Steve’s Saturdays routinely contain two or three places he needs to be. Shannon occasionally reminds him that he might be booking himself a little too heavily. Steve has an answer for that too. “Some of these are once-a-year things,” he said. “If you don’t go today, you’ve got to wait a year.” So he goes. It is the same philosophy he brought to raising Chase and Bella. “My kids are only kids for so long,” he said. Chase used to wake up at 6:30 in the morning asking, “What are we doing today?” Steve always had an answer. They were going somewhere. They were doing something. There was too much life happening outside the house to sit around and miss it. Even Steve’s animals have somehow gotten drafted into community service. The Bernards’ dog, Johnny, was adopted through Dog People of Livingston after the family lost their beloved dachshund, Snoopy. Steve also has three tortoises, and once fellow volunteers discovered that fact, naturally the tortoises started making appearances at children’s events too. Apparently, in the Bernard household, everybody volunteers.
Livingston Parish has no shortage of people who serve, and that is part of what makes this community so special. What made Steve stand out to my mom and me wasn’t simply the number of organizations we could put beside his name. It was how often we saw him in places where there was nothing for him to gain by being there. There is no job beneath him. He doesn’t need a title attached to the work, a seat on the board or a photograph afterward. If something needs doing, Steve does it. Some people give their money. Some give their expertise. Some lend their names. Steve Bernard gives something increasingly precious: his time. He gives it to Shannon, Chase and Bella. He gives it to his clients. He gives it to foster children, libraries, local businesses, theater, service clubs, nonprofits and community events throughout the parish he chose to call home. Somewhere along the way, Steve discovered that service was simply how he loved people. Wherever Livingston Parish needs him, he makes sure he’s there. And that is why this one wasn’t up for a vote. Living in Parish Magazine is proud to name Steve Bernard our 2026 Man of the Year.
