The Humboldt Area Foundation, a regional charitable foundation that controls over $75 million in assets, has hired Lost Coast Communications owner and general manager Patrick Cleary as its new executive director. Cleary replaces longtime executive director Peter Pennekamp, who left the organization in April.

(Full disclosure, right up top — Cleary’s Lost Coast Communications is the parent and publisher of your Lost Coast Outpost.)

“I am honored and humbled to have been asked to serve Humboldt Area Foundation and further the amazing work the Foundation does throughout the Humboldt, Trinity, Del Norte and Curry regions,” said Cleary in a press release. “This is the most generous community I have ever seen, and I look forward to supporting the efforts of the many donors and volunteers that make this such a special place.”

Apart from his last decade at the helm of Lost Coast Communications, which owns four local radio stations — KHUM, KSLG, KWPT and KXGO — Cleary has a long history in the Humboldt County private, non-profit and government sectors.

He served as the general manager of the Northcoast Co-op and public radio station KHSU. For many years he was chair of the county’s Headwaters Fund, and he serves on the boards of the St. Joseph Hospital Fund, The Humboldt Folklife Society and Dell’Arte International, among others. In 2008, the North Coast Association of Non-Profits named him its “Leader of the Year.” In 2010 he ran for county supervisor representing the Fifth District.

Cleary and his family will continue to maintain majority ownership of Lost Coast Communications. At a staff meeting this morning, he told us LCCIers that the company will be advertising nationally for a new general manager, and that he hopes to bring someone on in three months or so. Until then, he will be temporarily filling both roles.

^^^

On a personal note: Your Lost Coast Outpost feels secure in speaking for the company as a whole when it says that there is no better boss in Humboldt County, and few human beings whom it is such an honor to call a friend. We resentfully congratulate the staff of the Humboldt Area Foundation and vow to destroy them all sooner or later.