Wednesday, December 3, 2025
The Ahmanson Foundation, Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation
December 3, 2025 11am Pacific
PDF of Grantmaker Profiles
Sara Straubel, Senior Program Officer, The Ahmanson Foundation, Los Angeles, CA
The Ahmanson Foundation has served its community in the greater Los Angeles area since 1952. The Foundation currently concentrates its funding on cultural projects supporting the arts, education at the collegiate and pre-collegiate levels, medicine and delivery of health care services, specialized library collections, programs related to homelessness and low-income populations, preservation of the environment, and a wide range of human service projects.
Simultaneously, the Foundation is particularly committed to the support of non-profit organizations and institutions which continually demonstrate sound fiscal management, responsibility to efficient operation, and program integrity. The goal of the Foundation is to increase the quality of life in Southern California and to enhance its cultural legacy.
Dr. Sara Straubel is a Senior Program Officer at The Ahmanson Foundation where she oversees a grantmaking portfolio of requests in arts and humanities, education, healthcare, and human services. She also represents the Foundation in all its strategic collaborations, including serving as a Managing Funder for the Nonprofit Sustainability Initiative, on the Steering Committee of LA Arts Recovery Fund, and as Vice Chair of the Executive and Investors’ Committee of the LA Partnership for Early Childhood Investment.
In addition to her role at the Foundation, Sara is also an adjunct professor at the Price School of Public Policy in the Master of Nonprofit Leadership and Management programt at the Universtiy of Southern California. Previously, Sara served as a Research Assistant at Project Zero, an educational research center at Harvard University.
Sara holds a Doctorate in Policy, Planning, and Development from the University of Southern California, where her research explored the extent of implicit racial bias in philanthropy.
Flozell Daniels, Jr., Chief Executive Officer, Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Winston-Salem, NC
The Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation has a strong vision of a South that is celebrated for its diversity, where everyone has shared wealth, room to grow, and has a government that reflects the demographic of its constituents. They fund work across an 11-state Southern footprint: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
The Foundation supports groups building power to advance racial equity along three primary pathways: democracy and civic engagement, supportive policies and institutions, and economic opportunity.
As Chief Executive Officer of the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation (MRBF), Flozell Daniels, Jr. leads the overall operations of the Foundation, from grantmaking to investing, communications and strategy, providing both organizational and field leadership. Flozell represents MRBF’s programs and vision for change to our grantee and philanthropic partners, as well as the general public.
Flozell previously served as CEO and President of the Foundation for Louisiana, which launched in 2005 to foster an equitable recovery from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Prior to his 14+ years leading FFL, Flozell was Assistant Vice President and Executive Director of State and Local Affairs for Tulane University and served in the Mayor’s Office during Marc Morial’s tenure as Public Policy Specialist in the Division of Federal and State Programs.
Flozell recently completed a five-year term as chairman of the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority, leading the agency through a return to full public accountability, a nationally recognized COVID response, and success in meeting its equity goals. He is also board member emeritus of the Urban League of Louisiana and served with distinction on the Louisiana Public Defender Board and the Governor’s Climate Initiatives Taskforce in Louisiana.
A New Orleans native, Flozell brings expertise in public policy, community development, criminal justice reform, climate policy, transit equity and asset development.
Angela Richardson, Senior Trainer, The Grantsmanship Center
Angela brings more than 20 years' experience as a nonprofit program and fund developer, strategic planner, and organizational coach. As senior trainer, Angela has coached other trainers for The Grantsmanship Center and trained staff for nonprofit organizations, school districts, governments, faith-based organizations, and colleges and universities. She brings additional expertise in education and the arts, recently delivering a virtual workshop for Broward County Cultural Division, FL as part of the Business Skills for Creatives series. Angela has facilitated many in-person Meet-the-Grantmaker panels in Los Angeles for PROJECT GRANTSMANSHIP and for the City of Los Angles, city council members. Recently, Angela trained faculty and community-based nonprofit leaders as part of a Research Proposal Workshop sponsored by UCLA Health Sciences.
