Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. is founder and president of Fieldstead and Company, Inc., a private philanthropy working in national and international relief and development, education, the arts, family and children's concerns, and religious freedom issues worldwide. Born in Los Angeles in 1950, Ahmanson, is a graduate of Occidental College in that city and holds a master's degree in linguistics from the University of Texas at Arlington.
Ahmanson is a member of the board of both the John M. Perkins Foundation in Jackson, Mississippi, and The Claremont Institute of Claremont, California. A frequent writer on public policy issues, Ahmanson has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Philanthropy, and Religion and Liberty, among others.
Recent projects include a four-year series of conferences on holistic development co-sponsored with Food for the Hungry International, held in Thailand, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, and the Philippines; support for Harambee Christian Preparatory School, and inner city school in Pasadena, California; and an international photo exhibit and book on the victims of wary in Nagarno-Karabagh. Among current projects are support for music education for elementary students in public schools in Orange County, California; sponsorship of Stanley Spencer: An English Vision, a retrospective exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Art in Mexico City, and the Palace of Fine Art in San Francisco; and funding for the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, twenty-eight volumes of patristic commentary on the Bible to be translated into seven languages, e.g., German French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, and Mandarin Chinese.
Ahmanson lives with his wife Roberta in Orange County, California.