Don Howard was appointed President & CEO of The James Irvine Foundation, effective October 2014. He served as Interim President & CEO from Feb. - Sept. 2014. Prior to that appointment, as Executive VP, Don directed the Foundation’s program and grantmaking activities. He helps lead the Foundation’s ongoing efforts to deepen, extend and amplify the impact of our work.Prior to joining the Foundation in 2012, Don was a partner at the Bridgespan Group for over a decade where he was a strategic advisor to nonprofit and foundation leaders and led Bridgespan’s San Francisco office. As part of this work, he managed Irvine’s strategic planning process in 2002-2003 that led to the Foundation’s current focus in Arts, CA Democracy & Youth. Earlier in his career, Don helped corporate leaders formulate strategy and improve the effectiveness of their organizations as a Principal at Booz Allen Hamilton and as a Managing Director at Scient Corporation.Don grew up in Long Beach, CA before coming to the Bay Area to earn his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering at Stanford University. He later returned to Stanford to obtain his Master’s in Business Administration. More recently, he co-developed and taught a class on social entrepreneurship at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley.As a volunteer, Don has been an activist around HIV and other health-related issues, serving in the past on advisory boards at the San Francisco Dept. of Public Health, UCSF, and the National Institutes of Health. He has acted as an advisor to boards of several San Francisco community-based organizations. He currently serves on the board of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, where he is actively involved in the development of a new community-based approach to improving gay men's health and ending HIV transmission. Don has worked extensively outside the U.S., including a volunteer posting with a U.S. AID-sponsored initiative to provide business advice to private enterprises in Central Europe.