Howard Warren Buffett

In 2009, Buffett was appointed to the United States Department of Agriculture, where he served as a special assistant in the Office of the Secretary. There, he managed the national expansion strategy for the Department’s $480 million Cooperative Extension Service program. Additionally, he was charged with identifying strategic external partnerships aimed at advancing the core mission areas of research, education, and economics. He also served on the five-year Strategic Planning Initiative, and represented the department in the White House Innovation and Information Policy Working Group.[11]

Upon completion of his service at the Department of Agriculture, Buffett served as a policy advisor in the Executive Office of the President of the United States at the White House, where he was responsible for the Cross-Sector Partnerships portfolio. In this role, he directed strategy development for cross-sector partnerships and innovation strategies aimed at enhancing collaboration between the White House, federal departments, agencies, corporations, nonprofits and foundations.[10]

After leaving the White House, Buffett became the director of agriculture development at the Task Force for Business Stability Operations under the U.S. Department of Defense, where he was tasked with designing and implementing a strategy for agricultural development in Afghanistan and Iraq under the leadership of Paul Brinkley.[12]

In May 2010, Buffett spearheaded a White House Energy Innovation Conference focused on promoting partnerships. Represented at the event were four federal departments, three federal agencies, entrepreneurs, state government officials, academia, private sector leaders, nonprofits and innovators.[11]

At the conference, the United States Department of Energy and the Small Business Administration jointly announced that both the Small Business Investment Company program and the Small Business Technology Transfer program would begin using their existing funding networks to promote small green energy firms through a new $60 million Business Clean Energy Innovation Fund. The event also served as the launch vehicle for the Regional Energy Innovation Conferences.[11]

The first Regional Energy Innovation Conference was hosted in Omaha, Nebraska on June 17, 2010. The event focused on connecting entrepreneurs and small enterprise with representatives from organizations across sectors and was itself a partnership between the City of Omaha, The Gallup Organization, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Over one hundred local, regional, and national organizations were represented at Gallup University’s Omaha Campus to discuss issues ranging from regional gap funding and human capital needs to collaboration and the early adoption of energy innovation.[13]

At the 2011 Social Good Summit in New York, Buffett introduced an approach premised on addressing social problems by systematically lining up nonprofits to each need.[14]

On May 28, 2018, Buffett announced the release of his book titled "Social Value Investing: A Management Framework for Effective Partnerships."[15] Published by Columbia University Press, the book details specific case studies and examples on topics including clean energy, water scarcity and sustainable agriculture.[16]

In 2010, Buffett joined the advisory board for Toyota Motor North America.[17] He chairs the advisory board for the Harvard University International Negotiation Program.[18]

He previously served on the Board of Visitors for the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, and on the boards of New York Needs You and the Clark and Hinman Foundation. Additionally, he has served as an advisor to both the United Nations Office for Partnerships and the FEED Foundation.[19]

He served as a judge for the Collaboration Prize,[20] the American Express 2009 NGen Fellows Program, and the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s business plan competitions.

He is an active member of the Nebraska Society and a lifetime alumni member of the Future Farmers of America (FFA).[21]

Buffett currently serves as the executive director of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, a private family foundation focused on improving the standard of living and quality of life for the world’s most impoverished and marginalized populations. He has engaged in the humanitarian and agriculture development efforts of the Foundation worldwide.[22]

Buffett also sits on the board of Doris Buffett's Learning By Giving Foundation. He has referred to Learning by Giving as the first step in the implementation of the Social Value Investment model, "By simply empowering students to become problem solvers in their own communities, we maximize the impact of our efforts, encourage innovation, and inspire life-long engagements with philanthropy."[23]

In the fall of 2013, Buffett served as a co-professor teaching an Innovations of Public Management class at his alma mater at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Buffett taught the course with program head William Eimicke, and is currently an adjunct associate professor and research scholar at the school, teaching philanthropy, social value investing, and management innovation.[24]