Roberta Green Ahmanson

Roberta Green Ahmanson is a writer and philanthropist whose public activities are focused on deepening awareness and understanding of the role of religion in public life, the importance of knowing history to understand the present, and the vital role the arts play in shaping human experience. Since 1986, Ahmanson has worked with her husband, Howard, in shaping the granting priorities of his private philanthropy, Fieldstead and Company. In that time, the Ahmansons have sponsored a number of art exhibitions in the United States and Great Britain. In the 1990s Ahmanson and her husband renovated an early twentieth century hotel and Carnegie Library in her hometown Perry, Iowa. The Ahmansons have also commissioned various works of art and music. In addition to lecturing for the International Arts Movement in New York City, Ahmanson is the co-author with Paul Marshall and Lela Gilbert of Islam at the Crossroads, 2002, and a contributor and co-editor with Marshall and Gilbert of Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion, published by Oxford University Press, Fall 2008. Previously, Ahmanson worked as a sixth grade teacher in Toronto, Canada, and then as a religion reporter and editor for the San Bernardino Sun and the Orange County Register, both in Southern California. Ahmanson was born in 1949, grew up in Iowa, and was educated in Michigan and Missouri. Ahmanson, who lives with her husband in Orange County, California, is interested in art, religion, history, architecture, embroidery, and murder mysteries.