Givers & Shakers

GIVERS

& SHAKERS THREE SAN FRANCISCO HEAVY HITTERS COMBINE THEIR CLOUT AND COMPASSION TO

PAY IT FORWARD. by

LEILANI MARIE LABONG photography by

COOPER CARRAS DOUGLAS FRIEDMAN M AT T E D G E

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T H E R O BI N H O O D

DANIEL LURIE FOUNDER, TIPPING POINT COMMUNITY

SOTHEARA YEM HAS TEARS IN HIS EYES. FORMERLY

to impart the same ethos to their 3-year-old daughter, Taya, and one of San Francisco’s homeless, the 27-year-old is recalling the 10-month-old son, Sawyer. day one of his mentors, Tipping Point Community founder Daniel “Having children has renewed Daniel’s resolve to make sure Lurie, purchased a sharp navy-blue designer suit for him. Yem, a people have access to the basic things they need to care for their first-generation Cambodian American, was scheduled to deliver a families,” says Prowda, who met Lurie in 2001, when they were both speech in front of 900 people at the 2011 Tipping Point benefit gala, working at New York City’s Robin Hood Foundation, which fights and Lurie, who had helped the amateur filmmaker secure housing poverty in NYC and also provides relief funds to people affected by and employment, knew that a blazer from the clearance rack at H&M disasters, such as Hurricane Sandy or 9/11. wouldn’t cut it.

In fact, Lurie counts his fourth day of work at the Robin Hood “Daniel kept telling me that I deserved to wear a quality suit,” Foundation, September 11, 2001 (the day he witnessed people falling says Yem, who now works as an outreach coordinator for Year Up from the sky; the day he watched the second plane hit the South Tower), Bay Area, a job-training organization for low-income urban youths. as the day his career path was determined. “That experience, coupled “He helped me understand what it’s like to actually live and no with working at a place geared toward helping those hardest hit by the longer just exist.” attacks, made my direction clear. I knew we Yem is just one of the thousands that needed something just like the Robin Hood “THERE IS Tipping Point has helped. The organizaFoundation back home in the Bay Area.” tion awards grants to Bay Area nonprofits Lurie regards September 20, 2005— OF DANIEL THAT THINKS, focused on improving the lives of those when he was able to award $50,000 checks in poverty through employment, educato Tipping Point’s inaugural grantees, tion, housing, and wellness initiatives. The Richmond-based Rubicon Programs and the statistics are challenging: 1.3 million people Homeless Prenatal Program in SF—as one in the Bay Area cannot meet their basic of his most rewarding days. Nearly a needs. Nonetheless, Lurie’s mission is to decade later, the organization’s portfolio AND eradicate Bay Area poverty entirely. And has expanded to include 46 Bay Area nonjudging from his tireless Rolodex rallying profits, including Aspire Public Schools in (on his speed dial: pro football Hall of Famer Oakland, which was recently awarded LOW-INCOME Ronnie Lott, one of Tipping Point’s founding Tipping Point’s first $1,000,000 grant, to FAMILIES. members; IfOnly.com CEO Trevor Traina, support its college-readiness endeavors. a childhood friend; and Apple design guru (Because Tipping Point deliberately doesn’t MY WORK IS DONE. Jony Ive), Lurie, 37, will not rest until each of have an endowment to rely upon—“This HE KNOWS the 1.3 million—enough people to fill every WE’RE JUST SCRATCHING ensures a very hungry model and plenty THE SURFACE.” inch of AT&T Park 30 times over!—gets a fair of pavement pounding,” says managing —ALEC PERKINS, board member break. So yes, one success story is a great director Jen Pitts—grant money comes from accomplishment. But in Lurie’s estimation, fundraising dollars, and operating costs are when it comes to better living through greater opportunities, the more, supplied by a required minimum bequest of $250,000 per year from the merrier. In 2013, Tipping Point grants to antipoverty nonprofits each of the 23 board members.) helped 1,750 people find new jobs, 4,089 people exit homelessness, Lurie, who was appointed by SF Mayor Ed Lee to chair the city’s and 1,539 students enroll in college.

Super Bowl 50 bid committee, expects February 7, 2016, when the “My dad, who’s a rabbi, always says that making a difference NFL championship befalls Levi’s Stadium, to be another major vicin just one life is great,” says Lurie, who named the organization after tory. In fine print brilliantly conceived by Lurie to ensure the most Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book about the cumulative power of philanthropic Super Bowl in history, 25 percent of money raised from small changes. “I think it’s only good enough to be a tipping point.” sponsors will support humanitarian work in the Bay Area.

For Lurie, a Bay Area native, public service has been a way of Another unorthodox blueprint: T Lab, Tipping Point’s new life since he was a kid. He clocked as many hours volunteering at research and development arm, is a brain trust of creative problem homeless shelters as he did playing soccer or baseball. His parents solvers who divine experimental solutions to some of poverty’s bigare longtime philanthropists: His father, Brian Lurie, is chairman of gest issues—early childhood education, affordable child care, and the board at the New Israel Fund; stepmother Caroline Fromm Lurie prisoner re-entry into society. Since R&D is virtually unheard of in supports continuing education through her family’s foundation, the social sector, T Lab is yet more evidence of Lurie’s pioneering the Fromm Institute; and his mother, Mimi Haas, and late stepfaapproach to philanthropy. “There is no part of Daniel that thinks, ther, former Levi Strauss CEO Peter Haas, emphatically supported Wow, we’ve already raised $80 million and served 365,000 low-income the humanitarian endeavors of Stanford’s Haas Center for Public families. My work is done,” says board member Alec Perkins of Service. Lurie and his wife, Becca Prowda—whose personal foray into Perkins Investment Management. “He knows we’re just scratching public service began at age 15, as an AIDS hospice volunteer—plan the surface.”

NO PART

OPPOSITE: COOPER CARRAS; STYLIST: KAT YEH; GROOMING: TAHNI SMITH/AUBRI BALK INC.

WOW, WE’VE ALREADY RAISED $8O MILLION SERVED 365,OOO

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T H E R ES C U E WO R KE R

VANESSA GETTY FOUNDER, SAN FRANCISCO BAY HUMANE FRIENDS

THE VANITY LICENSE PLATE ON THE 26-FOOT VAN

“I can’t tell you how many times growing up that we pulled to parked outside the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA (PHS/SPCA) in the side of the road to pick up a stray dog or feed a feral cat,” she Burlingame reads, “Fix Me.” The wordplay refers to the 900 free spay says. “Strays have a history, they have feelings and, most importantly, and neuter surgeries that have been performed inside the state-of-thethey’re living creatures. My family always took that extra step to help art mobile clinic each year since 2005, when the van was gifted to the them and care for them, and that’s how I raise my kids.” organization by lifelong animal welfare activist Vanessa Getty. The Getty says her three young children possess a sympathy for reason? By fixing and vaccinating dogs and cats in low-income Bay animals that even extends to pigeons. And while they are still in the Area communities, San Francisco Bay Humane Friends—an auxiliary lemonade-stand stage of fundraising for animal welfare (“They’re of PHS/SPCA, founded by Getty—has greatly reduced the number of smart. They set up on Fillmore Street, where there’s a lot of foot trafunwanted and stray animals on our streets. fic”), their mother’s philanthropic enterprises are more elaborate “Stopping the problems before they start is the best way I know affairs, and her public profile has provided her access to a wide to make a real impact,” says Getty, whose organization provides fundvariety of donors. ing for resources—including equipment, staff, and medicine—for free Her friends in the fashion world have been particularly genand low-cost spay and neuter programs. Her friend and colleague erous. With the support of brands that include Michael Kors, Ralph Rebecca Katz, former director of SF Animal Care and Control, doesn’t Lauren, Louis Vuitton, and Mulberry, Getty has staged countless mince words about the importance of fixing cocktail parties and trunk shows. And she animals: “If we don’t curtail the number of puts on one heck of a stylish fundraiser: Her animals entering shelters, it becomes very Purr fashion events, with sartorial donations challenging to diminish the number of ani“VANESSA IS from more than 80 designers, local fashion mals being euthanized. Most people want to mavens, and such Hollywood A-listers as NOT A BIG FAN OF simply write a check and not think about the Ellen DeGeneres and Nicole Kidman, have suffering. Vanessa rolls up her sleeves and gone a long way toward sustaining SF Bay faces it head-on.”

FRANKLY, Humane Friends. The most recent Purr An elegant, flaxen-haired femme, who event raised $350,000—enough to cover WHEN SHE SETS HER is often photographed wearing haute finery nearly 18 months of operating costs for the MIND TO SOMETHING, at high-profile galas and other red-carpet mobile clinic. ’ SHE S A REAL to-dos, Getty—a local girl who married into “Ninety percent of my time is spent at one of America’s wealthiest families—is well home with my family, hanging out with my known in the Bay Area and beyond. The siren kids,” says Getty, who is often portrayed in landed among 2014’s Best Dressed in Vanity the press as a social butterfly. But she says, —KEN WHITE, PHS/SPCA president Fair, which called her “one of the prettiest “When I do go out, it is always to support the girls in town.” But looks aren’t the half of it. causes and people that are important to me.”

Case in point: Prior to joining the board of For almost a decade, she and White PHS/SPCA in 2005, she carried out some harrowing rescue missions for have dreamed about building an animal sanctuary, perhaps near Pets Unlimited, including taxing trips to save “unadoptable” animals Half Moon Bay, modeled after the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in from a Sacramento shelter known to provide animals to UC Davis for southern Utah, which provides a 3,700-acre refuge for nearly 2,000 research experiments. And long before that, as an undergrad at UCLA, homeless birds, dogs, cats, horses, goats, donkeys—you name it, she worked for Animal Rescue Volunteers, a Simi Valley–based nonthey’ve probably got it. profit, which took shelter dogs about to be euthanized into Los Angeles But it’s impossible to think about the rescue and care of animals neighborhoods, where they might be adopted. without considering how they came to be at risk of harm. Many advoSuch humble but daring feats have been a hallmark of her life. cates point to the lack of strong legislation protecting these creatures She has fostered a kitten with a case of ringworm; dodged oncoming from abuse. A New York Times article reports that New York animal traffic on a busy stretch of I-10 to save a wayward dog; and, along with activists recently “captured law enforcement’s attention in part by PHS/SPCA president Ken White and SF Animal Care and Control, resemphasizing that animal cruelty can be a ‘red flag’ for future crimes, cued a pup that had been beaten and chemically burned by a mentally particularly domestic violence.” And Getty agrees. “There need to be ill homeless man. The animal had to be put to sleep—but that fate was serious consequences for animal abusers,” she says. “If you harm an far more humane than continued suffering. animal, you can just go back and adopt another one. There are no real “I was raised in a family that loves animals,” says Getty, whose safeguards, at least none that I consider satisfactory.” household is currently reigned over by three cats (one named Navin Might she someday get involved in the fight for more animalR. Johnson, after Steve Martin’s character in The Jerk) and a “terrierfriendly laws? She says, “Absolutely—I’d love to work toward that.” poodle-squirrel-opossum” rescue mutt called Chauncey, who is When the time comes, Getty will no doubt be a valuable champion. hypoallergenic (her husband, Billy, is allergic to dogs), terrified of cars, As White says, “Vanessa is not a big fan of ‘can’t be done.’ Frankly, and “made of nothing but love.” when she sets her mind to something, she’s a real force of nature.”

‘CAN’T BE DONE.’

OPPOSITE: DOUGLAS FRIEDMAN; STYLIST: LAUREN GOODMAN; MAKEUP: MICHAELA SOUTH; HAIR: BRYNN DOERING/AUBRI BALK INC.

FORCE OF “NATURE.”

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L A EMPÁTICA

TRACI DES JARDINS BOARD MEMBER, L A COCINA

ON THE SUNNY PATIO OF HER NEW RESTAURANT,

cook the green chile enchiladas,” “broadcast the daily specials on a Arguello, a Mexican eatery in the historic Presidio Officers’ Club, big chalkboard”). “As a restaurateur, you have to listen to feedback,” restaurateur Traci Des Jardins takes a sip of her hibiscus agua fresca she says. “You might not act on all of it, and that’s OK, because you’re and unleashes an impassioned defense of undocumented immicreating your own identity, but you at least have to listen. If you don’t, grants. “I think it’s appalling that we have not done more for the you’re not going to be good at what you do.”

Latin American population. I think it’s a failure of our federal govLa Cocina flourished in 2013: Revenue from the incubated ernment not to recognize how much this population has contributed businesses, which include such grocery store fixtures as Kika’s Treats to our society. From an immigration standpoint, they get the short and Clairesquares, generated $4.1 million and created 155 jobs. The end of the stick. Absurd!” organization also held its first benefit gala that year, raising $100,000 And just like that, Des Jardins—daughter of a Fresno sugar beet, in one night. Des Jardins and her friend, Discovery Channel personalcotton, and rice farmer; granddaughter of poor Mexican immigrants; ity Adam Savage, donated an intimate dinner at Jardinière, hosted by and employer of many a hardworking Hispanic cook, waiter, host, the chef and the MythBuster. The guests feasted on such dishes as a food runner, and busser—throws down “space burrito salad,” which Des Jardins and the gauntlet. (Presumably, San Francisco’s NASA developed for astronauts, and a turkey enduring status as a sanctuary city—a “safe dinner entrée inspired by the one cooked “TRACI haven” in which city employees do not aid under the hood of a car on MythBusters in REALLY UNDERSTANDS federal immigration enforcement—gives 2012. Although the gimmicky repast wasn’t WHAT THE Des Jardins some confidence to voice her exactly on par with the refined French fare personal conviction.) the Hayes Valley restaurant is famous for, Des Jardins’ stake in the matter is clearly Des Jardins didn’t bat an eye.

IN THE personal, and since 2002, she’s been able to “Traci is as salt-of-the-earth as it gets,” FOOD INDUSTRY use her food and cooking expertise to help says Savage, who admired her ease and ARE, immigrants. As a board member at La Cocina, authenticity when she was a contestant on the SF nonprofit incubator for low-income season three of Top Chef Masters. “She has immigrants aspiring to be food-world entrethis kind of frontier spirit that comes from preneurs, Des Jardins plays a role in making her upbringing on the farm. She understands the American dream come true. where food comes from, and she under“A lot of immigrants don’t want to be stands how it gets to the table.” documented; they don’t want to be ‘on the Which is to say, from the hands of grid,’” she says. “I know how much fear is migrant laborers, working in the fields, or involved for the La Cocina entrepreneurs in the restaurants, or anywhere else in the to make their businesses official. And we’re food-supply chain, for that matter. “We have —CALEB ZIGAS, La Cocina’s executive director there to assure them that they’re not going our heads in the sand in terms of what the to be deported, and that everything’s going Latin American community does for this to be OK.” country,” she says. “They take jobs most In 2012, La Cocina supported 39 businesses, which generpeople don’t want. They’ve got beautiful spirits and humble disposiated $3.35 million in revenue and created 110 jobs. Among those tions—and an amazing work ethic. They’ve scraped and scrambled to successful enterprises is El Huarache Loco, which began in 2000 get here, to make a living, to take care of their families, and to put food when La Cocina graduate Veronica Salazar decided to sell Mexican on their tables. It’s important, at least for me, to give back to them as huaraches—fried masa cakes topped with a slew of cultural ingremuch as possible.” dients, from nopales to chorizo—out of her living room. The Mexico Des Jardins’ empathy might be the most valuable asset she proCity native is now shacked up, with her 22 employees, in a classy vides to La Cocina. “Traci really understands what the barriers in the brick-and-mortar at Larkspur Landing. “She’s there alongside the big food industry are, not just for women but for immigrant women,” says guns—Belcampo Meat Company, Rustic Bakery, and Miette,” says a Caleb Zigas, La Cocina’s executive director. “Just having her around proud Des Jardins. inspires faith in our entrepreneurs.” Savage drives the point home When Salazar opened her eatery, Des Jardins offered her advice with a beautifully astute observation: “If La Cocina weren’t around, (“add barbacoa to the menu more often,” “use stainless steel pans to Traci would have invented it.”

BARRIERS

NOT JUST FOR

WOMEN

OPPOSITE: MATT EDGE; HAIR + MAKEUP: TAHNI SMITH/AUBRI BALK INC.

TH TK

BUT FOR

IMMIGRANT ”WOMEN.”

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