PBS Foundation

About PBS Foundation

Linda Brown

President, The Ridgestone Foundation

Linda Brown is President of The Ridgestone Foundation, a private foundation that she co-founded in 1998 with her husband Abbott. The foundation has focused its resources on health care and rehabilitation, higher education, elder care, environmental issues and the arts.

With a background in finance, Brown has guided Ridgestone's work toward innovative projects that include the construction of a one-of-a-kind water based rehabilitation facility for the severely disabled at California State University at Northridge, a distinguished speaker's series directed toward a private high school audience, and the establishment of an inner city charter school that is ranked in the top tier of California state charter schools, and a chair in South Asian History at a small private college. Ridgestone is known for new projects and for trying to put together organizations that cooperate with one another to reach a goal. Most recently this proposed collaboration will join Ridgestone, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Venice Boys and Girls Club to establish a competitive sailing program directed toward youth in the Los Angeles area.

Ridgestone also deeply believes in supporting institutions that are necessary and important. Among those priorities include St. Johns Hospital in Santa Monica, The Music Center of Los Angeles, Claremont McKenna College, the University of Southern California, community music schools, and a portfolio of organizations that feed and care for the elderly in Southern California.

Among other things Brown has co- founded two schools, a popular for profit preschool and an inner city elementary school. She received the Robert Abell Philanthropic Award from the Los Angeles Commission on Disabilities, and at one time was a docent at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

She attended the University of California at Irvine and graduated from California State University at Northridge with a specialization in Chinese History and continued on with graduate work in World History. She resides in Los Angeles with her husband and is the parent of three adult sons. If the above is not enough fun, she collects art and has two cats, Lucky and Sophie.