Snapchat co-founder, foundation leader launch community-centered fire recovery program
Evan Spiegel, co-founder of the photo-sharing app Snapchat, and Miguel Santana, chief executive of the California Community Foundation, said this week that they are joining with scores of other groups to form the Department of Angels, whose mission will be to listen to how people in Altadena and Pacific Palisades want to rebuild, then to try to advance that vision with the government and private groups responding to last month's twin calamities.
The Department of Angels joins separate efforts led by developer Rick Caruso, sports and entertainment figures Magic Johnson, Casey Wasserman and Mark Walter, and Times Executive Chairman Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, to support what is predicted to be the most expensive natural disaster reconstruction in American history. Another prominent civic leader, real estate developer Steve Soboroff, was named by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass as her chief recovery officer.
Questions have been raised about whether the organizations and individuals heading them — some of whom have criticized Bass' initial actions after the fires erupted Jan. 7 — can put aside rivalries and avoid duplicating efforts.
The leaders of the new Angels group, and the others that have formed recently, all pledged to cooperate.
'What's the famous saying? It's amazing how much can get done if you don't care who gets the credit,' said Spiegel, who said the fires had displaced more than 150 Snap Inc. employees. (Snap Inc. owns the Snapchat app.) Sitting across a conference table at the company's Santa Monica headquarters, Santana agreed: 'This is an all-hands-on-deck moment. Instead of thinking about this as competing interests, I think we should think about it as it's going to require all of this, plus a lot more.'
Read more: Rick Caruso launches foundation to help rebuild L.A. after wildfires
Spiegel and Santana, who had worked together previously on COVID-19 relief efforts, convened a meeting last week to kick off the new initiative. Spiegel has gained a reputation for his philanthropy, including his 2022 gift that paid off the debt of every student graduating from the Otis College of Art and Design. Santana has deep ties in government and civic circles, after serving as the top administrator with both the county and city of Los Angeles.
Those who attended the initial Department of Angels gathering included residents of both the Palisades and Altadena, religious leaders, businesspeople, academics and philanthropists. Also taking part were Tim Cadogan, chief executive of GoFundMe; Soon-Shiong, a surgeon and biomedical entrepreneur; and Maria Salinas, the top official at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.
They were joined by individuals who led fire recovery efforts in Northern California and other communities.
The California Community Foundation, Snap Inc., Spiegel and Snapchat co-founder Bobby Murphy have committed a total of $10 million in seed money to get the Department of Angels started.
Spiegel already donated $5 million to a group of four universities, including Harvard and UCLA, that will study the short- and long-term impacts of the fires on air and soil quality and human health.
The Department of Angels founders said they plan to meet for years with people in Altadena, Pasadena, Pacific Palisades and Malibu. They added that staffers will then help answer questions and break through the bureaucracy, while conveying the needs of locals to insurance companies and recovery agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers.
'The Department of Angels is not a government or private-sector initiative; it is a grassroots, community-driven network focused on ensuring impacted residents have control over their recovery,' a statement from the group said.
The group said it might support a 'block captain' model adopted following the Santa Rosa fire of 2017, in which neighborhood leaders took charge of much of the recovery effort. Department of Angels staff members, yet to be hired, would then help the block-level groups navigate insurance, planning or government hangups.
It 'takes more than brick and mortar construction to rebuild communities,' the group said. 'It requires community organizing and sustained attention.'
It is the latest effort by prominent Angelenos to help lead the recovery.
Soon-Shiong said in a full-page announcement in The Times that he had formed a Leadership Council to get private sector leaders into the rebuilding effort. In an interview Tuesday, he said Robert A. Bradway, chief executive of biotech giant Amgen, helped conceive the idea and he has asked several others, including Gene Sykes, a former chief executive of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, to join the effort.
Soon-Shiong said his group will focus in part on bringing 'subject matter experts' to assure that the best practices from science and other fields are applied to the rebuilding. He called his 'greatest concern' assuring support for less financially secure residents of Altadena.
The Times' owner said his group, which is in the formative stages, stands ready to help the others, and that he wants his news outlet to be a resource for the public about recovery programs, while also continuing to study what went wrong in the initial fire response.
On Monday, Caruso introduced the Steadfast LA foundation to the rebuilding ecosystem. He committed unspecified 'millions' of dollars and said his group will focus intensively on clearing hurdles to reconstruction.
'I think it's great, the more people who are leaning in and shining a light on the issues, that can't be anything but good,' Caruso said. 'There's no sense of ownership. Everybody just wants to reach the end goal. How we get there, or who gets credit for it doesn't matter, certainly not to me.'
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his rebuilding initiative on Jan. 28. LA Rises is headlined by Walter, the Los Angeles Dodgers chairman; Johnson, the Lakers legend turned entrepreneur and part-owner of the Dodgers; and Wasserman, the entertainment industry super agent who leads the Olympics organizing body LA28.
Walter said the Dodgers' foundation would provide as much as $100 million to jump-start LA Rises fundraising. The group said it hoped to attract more donations and to provide a place for the kind of inspired altruism that emerged after the fires.
Read more: Trump surveys Pacific Palisades devastation: 'It's incredible. It's really an incineration'
In late January, President Trump also waded into the rebuilding question, suggesting that he would appoint a federal commission to oversee the effort, but he hasn't clarified what that group would do or who would serve on it.
Previous disaster recoveries have required multibillion-dollar interventions by the state and federal government. Trump has sent mixed signals on that front, both saying he would get the problem "fixed" and that he would hold up federal money until California imposes a photo identification requirement on voters.
Perception of the efforts may be shaded by the possible political ambitions of the principals.
Newsom's name repeatedly comes up in discussions of potential 2028 presidential candidates. Caruso, who lost the 2022 mayor's race to Bass, is thought by some to be positioning to run again, or to run for governor. That provokes speculation about how much electoral politics might play into the responses.
Caruso made it clear that he does not plan to let up on his criticism of Bass' initial fire response, even as he tries to work with the city in rebuilding. Trump and Times owner Soon-Shiong also continue to be critical of the mayor. "The Private Sector Must Lead the Rebuild" because "government moves too slowly," Caruso said Wednesday in posts on X.
Ten days after the fires began, Bass appointed Soboroff — previously associated with major developments such as Playa Vista, Staples Center (Now Crypto.com Arena) and the Alameda Corridor rail expansion — to work with her and city departments on reconstruction.
Bass and Soboroff haved said they welcome the growing ranks of fire recovery groups, regardless of who leads them, or what they have said about the mayor.
'I would rather have too many rather than too few,' Soboroff said. 'I applaud what people are doing, whether their intentions are 100% pure or 95% pure.'
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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