Steve Toben is the president of the Flora Family Foundation in Menlo Park, which supports the philanthropic activities of the descendants of Bill Hewlett, co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard Company. Interests of the Flora Family Foundation include international development, the environment, K-12 education, and arts, culture and humanities. Before coming to the Flora Family Foundation in 2000, Mr. Toben served nine years as a program officer at the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation where he directed the Foundation's programs on environment and conflict resolution. In 2001 he received a Peacemaker/Peacebuilder Award from the National Peace Foundation in Washington for his decade of work in international conflict resolution. He is a past chair of the Management Committee of the Environmental Grantmakers Association and a founding member of the Peace and Security Funders Group.
Mr. Toben serves on several nonprofit boards of directors and advisory councils, including the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation in New York, Legacy Works in Palo Alto, and the Great Valley Center in Modesto. He is a former member of the Portola Valley Planning Commission and was elected to the Portola Valley Town Council in November 2003. In 2005, Mr. Toben was elected as Mayor of Portola Valley and will begin his term in 2006. Mr. Toben is a graduate of the Yale Law School and the University of North Carolina, where he was a Morehead Scholar.
