Howard G. Buffett

Chairman & CEO, Howard G. Buffett Foundation

Bio Current as of August 7, 2019

Howard G. Buffett is a farmer, photographer, businessman, sworn law enforcement officer, former elected official and Chairman and CEO of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, one of the largest private charitable foundations in the United States. The Foundation invests primarily in global food security, conflict mitigation and public safety.

Mr. Buffett manages a 1,500-acre family farm in central Illinois and operates a 400-acre farm in Nebraska. He oversees three Foundation-operated research farms in Arizona, Illinois, and Nebraska totaling 9,500 acres, and oversees two ranches in Arizona, and one farm in Texas, all adjacent to the U.S./Mexico border.

Mr. Buffett served as Sheriff of Macon County, Illinois from September 2017 through November 2018 after serving as an Auxiliary Deputy for five years in Macon County and Shelby County in Illinois. He currently serves as Undersheriff of the Macon County Sheriff’s Office and is a Volunteer Deputy Commander of the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona.

Mr. Buffett currently serves on the corporate board of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. and has served on a number of Fortune 500 boards as well as held several senior corporate executive positions. He was elected and served as a Commissioner on the Douglas County Board in Nebraska from 1989-1992 and served 20 years on the Commission on Presidential Debates.

He has been honored over the years for his leadership and contributions to agriculture, conservation, philanthropy, and journalism, including receiving the highest honors bestowed on a foreign citizen by the governments of Mexico, Colombia, and Rwanda for his work in each country.

Mr. Buffett has traveled to over 150 countries and authored eight books on conservation, wildlife, and the human condition, including two New York Times bestsellers, 40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry Worldand Our 50-State Border Crisis: How the Mexican Border Fuels the Drug Epidemic Across America. He is the executive producer of Virunga, an award-winning and Academy Award-nominated documentary about Africa’s oldest national park, and The River and the Wall, a documentary film about the Texas/Mexico border.