About Us - Hugh J. Ralston

President & CEO Email: Hugh J Ralston Phone: (805) 988-0196, Ext. 116 Fax: (805) 988-3397

Hugh was appointed the third president and CEO of the Ventura County Community Foundation in July 2004.

As CEO, he manages the work of the foundation in collaboration with the board and staff to expand the efforts of donor-advised and donor-designated funds, scholarship and field of interest funds and agency endowments, as well as other VCCF programs including the Center for Nonprofit Leadership, the Ventura County Civic Alliance, the Martin V. and Martha K. Smith Foundation and the Women’s Legacy Fund, Destino: The Hispanic Heritage Fund, the Heritage Fund, the Farmworker Housing Fund, the Special and Urgent Needs (SUN) Fund, the Community Response Fund, the Ventura County Veterans Fund and the Scholarship Fund for Ventura County.

Hugh is familiar with the history of Ventura County. His grandfather was a Sunkist lemon grower for over 40 years, primarily in the Oxnard Plain. Hugh remains a third-generation partner in the family’s businesses, based in Santa Barbara County.

An international, corporate and private banker for 16 years with Security Pacific and J.P. Morgan, Hugh also has extensive experience in nonprofits, including four years as the executive director of the Catholic Education Foundation in Los Angeles. He has served for over 15 years as a director/trustee for organizations that include Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., the San Francisco Theological Seminary, Southern California Grantmakers, the Workforce Investment Board of Ventura County, the Ventura County Community Commission, the Community Arts Music Association of Santa Barbara and KDB Radio, as well as the Community Foundations National Standards Board — a support organization of the Council on Foundations responsible for national standards for U.S. community foundations. His prior board service includes the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Research Institute at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles as well as volunteer leadership roles at The Huntington Library and the Autry Museum of Western Heritage. He also completed four years on the steering committee of the League of California Community Foundations, where he served as the first treasurer.

Hugh earned a bachelor’s degree cum laude from Amherst College and a MALD from The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, a joint program of Tufts and Harvard universities, with concentrations in international law and U.S. diplomatic history.

He is also an accomplished choral singer and has toured Europe performing with Mastersingers USA, an all-male choral ensemble which won first prize at the 2003 Eisteddfod in Langollen, Wales. His first solo recital was in 2010.

Hugh says of his job, “Building community remains one of the biggest opportunities in our frenetic globally connected world, and a community foundation is uniquely positioned to bring people and charitable capital together to create a more promising future. It is an enormous privilege for me to work with such dedicated and talented colleagues where my family has such deep roots, and to help make a difference for so many people. That is the alchemy that comes with a community foundation. ”

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