- today
ABC News' Zohreen Shah conducted a fireside chat between honorees, CORE co-founders Sean Penn and Ann Lee, at THR's Social Impact Summit. Penn and Lee both received the honor for Philanthropic Organization of the Year following the conversation.
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00:00Thank you both so much for being here.
00:07I met both of you during a defining moment in Los Angeles.
00:13It was a few years ago during COVID, and you had turned Dodger Stadium into a testing facility.
00:21And what you guys did there was incredible.
00:24You stayed to the end, and I know this because my own elderly father got his vaccination there.
00:32And you stepped in in a moment when the government couldn't step in as much as they would have wanted to.
00:39And we're now at another moment when the government is stepping back even further, you could say.
00:45In the last few days, the top FEMA chief resigned.
00:49EPA reportedly drafted a plan to end its ability to fight climate change.
00:53And the White House continues to gut weather science and disaster response.
00:59So, Anne, I want to ask you, how is CORE stepping in to fill the void?
01:04And, Sean, what is your reaction to all of this?
01:11I'm not sure.
01:12Is this one more?
01:13Yeah.
01:13Look, I've, when certain things happen, let's say, in the political aspect of our experience with disasters and so on,
01:28they may be not the challenge that you had hoped for or the resources that you had hoped for,
01:36but you go by, it's the one that you got.
01:40This is not to say that one might not separately have an activist position to, you know, work on behalf of the things,
01:49regaining supports that had been pulled and things like that.
01:53But our job remains the same in some ways.
01:58And our job is, you know, in particular when it comes to this kind of government response.
02:05The best funded, most prepared government agency or any organization will never be enough
02:14to do the amount of work that these kinds of very unpredictable,
02:20they're unpredictable in how they play out, not necessarily unpredictable in what happens,
02:25but events, whether it's a storm or in a conflict zone or fires, whatever it is.
02:32And so what we're always looking for to begin with are partnerships,
02:38whether those partnerships are with grassroots organizations that are already working on the ground
02:43in the areas where we work and or significantly government.
02:49And so, you know, I just sort of correct a little bit the nice words that you said coming into it
02:56in that, you know, with the Los Angeles Fire Department,
03:01did we together do Dodger Stadium and a lot of the other testing sites?
03:08And it was this, it's kind of the, you know, when we're able to find trust and cooperation
03:16with extremely well-trained, L.A. Fire is an extraordinary organization.
03:24You're able to gap fill for them because they can say what they're missing and they're in that game every day.
03:33And so then we look to see how we can fill that gap and we'll continue to do that.
03:40Again, some of the challenges you're talking about,
03:42the cuts that have been made, the utter recklessness and cynicism of what's happened that way,
03:51it doesn't really answer the questions related to CORE for me to address that.
03:57They're related to CORE.
03:58It's the same job.
04:01And, you know, we'll hope, we fight every day to make it as resourced as possible
04:06in good times and bad.
04:08In so many ways, it is so much of what we've been doing, right?
04:16We've been a scrappy organization for a very long time.
04:20We haven't been, like, one of these big organizations that gets tons of funding.
04:24We're not a household name.
04:26We've been able to manage to take what we have and build on what is already in these places,
04:33as Sean was saying, these communities, the infrastructure that's there,
04:37the churches, the community groups, the neighborhoods, and build on that,
04:42because that's unchangeable.
04:44That's always going to be there.
04:47FEMA and the current situation that we're seeing does make it much harder for us to plan.
04:56Some of these things you can plan.
04:58It should be about planning and preparedness.
05:00But we've gotten 30% of our funding cut because of this.
05:05Imagine with fewer resources, without the expertise of places like NOAA
05:11and the expertise of people who have been doing this work
05:14and a system that we've been so accustomed to kind of plugging into,
05:18where we see each other in so many disasters,
05:20you have the same agents working for FEMA and all these places that we're like,
05:25hey, we know each other, we know how to work together.
05:28It's so much easier to kind of know what to expect when there is so much chaos around you,
05:33and you're trying to provide some level of calm, security,
05:38and some peace to people who are suffering.
05:42So it's going to make our job so much harder, and it's frustrating.
05:46But as Sean said, it doesn't change how we work.
05:50It's actually, I think, drawing on the things that we've been able to hone
05:55over these last 15 years that we've been around of figure this shit out.
06:01We've got to cobble the pieces together, see what's working,
06:05and almost patchwork what we know is available, what's good, what's working,
06:12and then connect the dots.
06:15A 30% cut is remarkable.
06:17So how do you decide where you want to go and what you want to do?
06:22And maybe if you can take me back to January 7th, for example,
06:2710.30 a.m., the fires break out in the Palisades,
06:30and they keep spreading and they keep spreading.
06:33Where were both of you when that happened?
06:35What were you texting each other?
06:37When is the moment the decision is made?
06:40We are going to activate it.
06:41We're going to cover this.
06:42We're going to provide resources here.
06:44What is the litmus test for CORE, whether it's the LA fires or another disaster?
06:52The first text was, are you okay in your house?
06:58Because Sean lives in Malibu in such a fire-prone area.
07:01And the last big fires that came, I mean, it was right in his backyard.
07:06So that was, I think, the first text that we had around the fires.
07:10And then, of course, sort of, you know, the teams and the materials that we knew we were going to need to get around the table to respond to this.
07:21Jerome, our president who's here as well, was like, we need to, this is going to be a big response.
07:26I'm seeing it.
07:27You know, we need to get ready for this.
07:29And how we decide on these things is sort of a joint planning and gut feeling that we get from a lot of text messages, from us watching what's happening.
07:39We have teams that are tracking, you know, the fires and the hurricanes as well as general emergencies around the world about what is about to get really, really spicy.
07:49And we generally talk to each other and say, this is the one that we need to respond to.
07:56Because it's a factor of, do we have the resources that can strategically make a difference and have partners on the ground, you know, whether it's local government, the government, or organizations that can give us a general sense of what's happening.
08:10And then we'll send a team, basically, to provide immediate materials while they're assessing what are the other next things that we need to be doing.
08:19So you mentioned the fires the last time got very close to Sean's home.
08:24Sean, you lost your home in 1993.
08:27I lost mine, actually, in the last fire a few months ago.
08:31And I wonder how that changed you as becoming a fire victim.
08:37You suggest in The Hollywood Reporter that came out yesterday that it didn't have a negative impact on you.
08:43But I wonder how that moment, losing your home, maybe impacts the people you help.
08:48And how losing your home maybe made you a better humanitarian, if it did?
08:54Look, I was in a very, in one sense, you know, in the obvious ways, privileged position in the sense that I had fire insurance and I had, more significantly, that feeling that all of us would have and some may have had.
09:11But perhaps you did when you lost your home.
09:15You know, we'll see it in news interviews with people where the final resolve is when everyone is all right, the family.
09:27And you say to yourself, well, you know, what really matters is, well, I had just, for two years, and one much more recently, had my first two children.
09:41And they were, they had just left with their mother to a movie location in Washington, D.C.
09:49So I was so in that kind of, that's all that matters zone that I never really had another thought other than I felt kind of liberated from a lot of stuff I had.
10:02And so I don't think that that was a catharsis into being a better person.
10:11I think it really, for me, became clear that there was something that, you know, that one could do.
10:21We all have whatever personality profile of ourselves, what our needs are to feel like we're participating, you know, in life.
10:32And I'm pretty, I look for tangible things, very kind of, I guess, purpose-driven in that sense.
10:40And when Katrina happened, and I was focused on New Orleans in particular, I waited a couple of days very frustrated watching the coverage
10:56because I felt like anybody with two hands and two feet could be of help.
11:02But I also had made this assumption that one might be in the way of the authorities that are working in, you know, first responders formally.
11:17And then when I saw day after day nothing, that so little was being accomplished and a lot of mayhem was building,
11:24I thought, no, I'm going to go.
11:25And we, a couple of us went down, had an airplane tickets, and then we couldn't get out of Baton Rouge because they closed the airspace.
11:38And we went in.
11:38In either case, by the next day, we'd gotten 40 people out of the water.
11:44There wasn't a fireman, a policeman, a coast guard who said anything but thanks for being here.
11:53Everybody was thrilled to have other bodies.
11:57Most of them were not people like that.
11:59Most of them were locals who were doing everything that we were doing, you know, just helping their neighbors.
12:04And so when you see, and we know that sort of notoriously that event was handled miserably on a governmental level.
12:14But I thought at that time, when you think of best-case scenario, what would have happened here,
12:19it wouldn't have been that different without those civilians, without other hands, without citizens doing what citizens should do.
12:29And so there was something very engaging about that to me because I always feel like, you know,
12:37I think often about people who work with us and they're humanitarians.
12:43I feel much more like a plumber.
12:46You know, just, I don't really want to talk to babies or sick children or their parents.
12:53I just want to, just tell me what's broken and we'll see if we can help fix it.
12:58And so that sort of led to Haiti in 2010, et cetera.
13:07How can people help you fix it?
13:11If we can put up the QR code on the screen, that's where you guys can, you guys can take a picture.
13:16You guys can click on the link up there.
13:19How can people help with what you need right now?
13:21And what is it that you need right now?
13:23Yeah.
13:23Okay.
13:24The first thing I'm, I'm not going to do this thing of apologizing for, you know, a lot of times I've done it where you say,
13:30you know, it's not only money that we need in terms of support.
13:34We goddamn well need money.
13:40And then if you want to volunteer or offer a skill set or support in other ways to us, we'll goddamn well take that.
13:50And, and, and right down the line, because when we get money, and I think it's our strength,
13:56I think we're really good at casting from those communities, people that are leaders already, or that could be built as leaders.
14:06And that, that in doing that, you know, we, we, we, we spend money, I think very well.
14:12We leave something behind.
14:14We have about a minute left.
14:17So if you can quickly tell me, I, I know a lot about you both.
14:24I don't know if everyone knows a lot about both of you as philanthropists, human, humanitarians.
14:30If you can tell me a little bit about Anne, because we know so much about you, Sean, as the, as the actor.
14:37It is not the normal thing to start an organization and then basically uplift your partner to equal.
14:48The first time I interviewed you, you told me you wouldn't do it unless Anne was going to be there.
14:52What does she bring to the organization and to the work?
14:57And, Anne, if you can tell us a little bit about Sean, not the, not the Hollywood side, but Sean, the humanitarian, what do we not know?
15:05And what does he bring to core that we may not know?
15:09He's, I'm starting first.
15:11What?
15:11You want to go first?
15:12I go first.
15:13Okay.
15:14He is so funny and one of the smartest people I know.
15:19The biggest heart, so loyal.
15:25He, you know, this whole like thing about not being a humanitarian and plumber, like that's partially true.
15:31But if there's anybody in his life and there's so many people, there is, and you know this, that don't, that are not visible, that he has helped.
15:43It could be a stranger.
15:44It could be somebody he knows, but anybody who he sees a need is like, that's it.
15:51I'm going to, I'm jumping in.
15:53And then there's this like super, super obsessive side where it's like, I'm going to build this.
16:00Like if you look at his hands right now and thank God that his shoes are clean.
16:05You want to hold him up?
16:08As your shoes are clean, I'm so, so stoked.
16:11And your pants are clean because he spends the majority of his time obsessing and building.
16:18And every time you go to his house, it's like a new thing.
16:21And he's built out this new thing and obsessive personality that is like a perfectionist and like a big dreamer, big thinker, and just fun.
16:33And the person, unfortunately, he has to hear a lot about my boy troubles and gives the best advice on your, my love life.
16:44Okay, I'm going to get fast.
16:50I know everybody's been here a while.
16:53So it's, it's 2010, January.
16:59And we're, I'm in Haiti, never been there before.
17:04A group of us had started out at a kind of a broken house from the earthquake and laid our tents and sleeping bags out there and started working right away.
17:13We had a lot of medical supplies we brought in that we could distribute.
17:20And then we'd see these U.S. military helicopters going overhead and land, clearly landing quite nearby.
17:27So one day I got on the motorcycle and some, some of the others got in a car and we, we sort of drove under to follow to see what was happening.
17:35And, you know, there was a deployment of 22,000 U.S. soldiers that had responded in their humanitarian response to the earthquake.
17:45And one of the groups of the 82nd Airborne was, had the government, the United States government had leased property.
17:55And it was right where the biggest flood of initially 35,000 people had fled on the day of the earthquake to that green space that had been Haiti's only golf course.
18:07And it was on a hill. I didn't know how we played golf like that, but it, and it had like a, about a 13, 14 foot wall all the way around it.
18:17But in two set, two sections, the wall had fallen in the earthquake.
18:21And the people who lived outside there had probably never seen that green space before.
18:27They certainly wouldn't have been welcome there.
18:31And so they fled in.
18:34And so I'm guessing this, if I was one, two days at the other place, this would have been on about day six or seven after the earthquake.
18:42And, you know, makeshift tents and all of that.
18:49And we, I talked to the lieutenant colonel and said, you know, we'd like to, we've got resources this way.
18:59We have doctors.
19:00I brought with me seven doctors who were volunteering from the United States.
19:05And they had a lot of horsepower.
19:08We had a couple of rented trucks and a motorcycle.
19:11And comes in the story at some point.
19:13Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:14See, I said brief, but there is a setup.
19:19So anyway, now we're embedded with them.
19:24And every night, we didn't have the bother of a curfew.
19:29So we were, I didn't even know what a 501c3 was at the time.
19:33So we would 24 hours be available to the camp and no light and rains were like monsoon rains bellying tents and like rapids going down these crevasses.
19:47And so then the lieutenant general, Keene, Ken Keene, came to meet me when you saw what was happening because the monsoon rains come at night.
19:58And agreed that we should call a meeting of all the NGOs that were working in camp and get a coordination that was not happening.
20:07We had been trying to do that and getting a lot of this.
20:10And so we sat down in a circle and I saw that there was an extra chair that could have been sat in.
20:20But the person who was supposed to be sitting in that chair, about eight of us in the general, was this Korean ice princess who's staring at me the whole time like,
20:38what's this fucking actor boy doing here?
20:43You know, get his picture taken with a baby with a fly in their eye and go home kind of thing.
20:48And by the end of the meeting, because we had the camp, Army Corps was going to present a drainage mitigation plan.
21:01And her organization that she was running had the heavy equipment.
21:07So we were forced together.
21:11And I charmed the shit out of her.
21:15Made her think I was a serious individual.
21:18And then she became my mentor in this whole game.
21:22And I ultimately poached her from the UN.
21:32You guys are both remarkable humans.
21:35Thank you for everything you do.
21:36It's truly an honor to be here today to recognize these two extraordinary individuals that I admire professionally and personally.
21:47It's because I've seen firsthand their tireless work that really makes this world a safer, stronger and more steadfast.
21:56I think to tell the story appropriately, if I can ask you to please come back in time with me five years.
22:03Go to January 2020.
22:05Because the Los Angeles City Fire Department that I worked for for 20 years was first partnered with Corps at that time.
22:13And it was really at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when Los Angeles was facing one of the greatest public health emergencies in modern history.
22:23And it was unprecedented.
22:24And I think many people are surprised to learn that the city of Los Angeles doesn't have a Department of Public Health.
22:31The county does, but the city doesn't.
22:35So the LAFD stepped up to fill that gap.
22:38And we began screening.
22:40We began testing.
22:42We began vaccinating individuals to the best of our ability.
22:46But I'll be honest, we were outgunned.
22:49This is nothing we had ever had to deal with before.
22:52And there was so much uncertainty.
22:53There was more questions than there were answers.
22:56And you remember all the questions.
22:58It's, am I going to get sick?
22:59What about my elderly parents?
23:01What about my young kids?
23:03Are firefighters still going to go to 911 calls?
23:06Do I go to the ER?
23:08Is there going to be ventilators in there?
23:11Does a mask really work?
23:13And who can you trust?
23:16And we trusted Corps.
23:18They moved fast.
23:20They managed with strategy.
23:23They weren't just there.
23:25They knew what they were doing.
23:26And most importantly, I'll tell you firsthand, they led with heart.
23:30They really, really did.
23:32They were right there on the front lines along all of us first responders.
23:36Corps showed up each day.
23:39Now, if I could ask you now, fast forward five more years, same month, January 2025.
23:45We all know what happened.
23:46It was a different kind of disaster, another unprecedented one.
23:51I'm on a federal incident management team.
23:53I mean, you go anywhere in the nation for the worst of the worst.
23:55That was the worst I'd seen.
23:57One of the biggest natural disasters in Los Angeles history.
24:03And personally, I was deployed to the Palisades Fire for 28 days straight.
24:06Needless to say, it was exhausting.
24:09Your Los Angeles firefighters could not have fought harder.
24:13I'll tell you that.
24:14And simply put that the fire wasn't going to be stopped until the wind stopped.
24:19You know, with 100 mile per hour winds, I mean, I had the helmet, I'd ratchet on.
24:23It would fly off your head if you didn't grab it.
24:26It was incredible.
24:28We saw homes that turned to ash.
24:31We saw neighborhoods that were reduced to a forest of chimneys that I personally walked
24:37with Sean and Ann.
24:38But amidst all that destruction, of course, who was there with us again?
24:42It was core.
24:44And you saw in that video, you saw Sean and Ann.
24:48They didn't just show up.
24:50They were there with us.
24:51They were side by side.
24:53And they told us of what efforts that they were doing, what proactive things they were
24:59thinking.
24:59And then they would ask, what else can we do?
25:02And then they went and did it.
25:05So no matter what the emergency is, if it's a mudslide, an earthquake, a hurricane, a wildfire,
25:12there's four phases to it.
25:14And the first is prevention.
25:16Then you need response.
25:17Then you need mitigation.
25:18And then you have the long tail of recovery afterwards.
25:22And that's what makes core so different.
25:25They don't disappear when the headlines disappear.
25:30They move forward into that fourth phase, into that long tail of recovery.
25:37And they do it with compassion.
25:39They do it with speed.
25:41And they do it with staying power.
25:43They continue to be there.
25:44So whether it's COVID, whether it's going to be wildfires, it's disasters around the
25:49globe, core meets every crisis with that same fearless determination and commitment to
25:59equity.
26:00And that's one of the most impressive things that we saw, too, because they really went to
26:05those underserved communities.
26:07And they made sure that they were taken care of.
26:10They quickly assessed the situation.
26:13And then they would deploy an emergency response team.
26:17And they'd start to empower those that were affected.
26:20And it wasn't just during the crisis.
26:23Again, it was during that long tail of recovery that they stuck in it.
26:27And so today, we don't only just honor Sean, who I view as a friend.
26:34I've sat on his couch.
26:35I've heard from his soul what he cares about.
26:39I answer Ann's phone call on my department cell phone because she's got ideas that will
26:44blow you away, especially if it involves heavy equipment.
26:48I'm surprised she didn't roll up here in the Tonka truck.
26:51But, you know, the entire core team, and there's a lot of those members here, I was talking
27:01to them backstage.
27:02They're absolutely amazing.
27:04They have unwavering leadership.
27:06They're always moving forward.
27:07They're devoting their time and efforts to those communities in crisis.
27:13And today has been amazing.
27:15I can't, you know, tell you enough how impressive it is to see this audience full of people to
27:20be here and to learn.
27:22And if you are at all inspired by some of the topics that you've heard today, join in.
27:29Join us any way you can.
27:30You saw that QR code.
27:33You could go to CORE's website.
27:34Go to the fire department site.
27:36LAFD.org.
27:37There's a volunteer page.
27:38Come hang out.
27:38We'll put you to work.
27:42But in conclusion, I'd like to just share one last concept, if it's okay.
27:46I've been privileged to have been selected on a lot of different incident management teams
27:52over the decade.
27:53And I remember we had this one very difficult deployment.
27:56It was one of those with blood, sweat, and tears.
27:59And it was a high and tight team.
28:01And I see the incident commander turn towards us.
28:04And he goes, he said something that I found profound.
28:09It was very simple, but it resonated with me enough that I typed it up.
28:13I printed it out.
28:14And it's sitting at my desk at LAFD headquarters.
28:17And he simply said, the most important person on your team is the one that needs help.
28:26And there's a lot of truth to that.
28:27That concept is true.
28:28It's not just for the incident management team that they were there, for us overseeing the
28:34disaster, but it's in general.
28:37It's something that isn't built in a single moment, right?
28:43It's built by people.
28:45It's built by people like Sean and Ann who show up again and again and try to help.
28:52And they lift other people up, and especially those that need help.
28:58I'd like to say now, it is just an absolute honor to be able to present the Philanthropic
29:06Organization Award of the Year, rightly so, to Sean Penn and Ann Lee.
29:24But before we exit, I do want to, again, congratulate CORE as being named as Philanthropic Organization
29:32of the Year.
29:32And with all of the incredible work that you do, we've all been touched by CORE in some
29:37way.
29:37I actually got my first two COVID shots at a CORE site at Dodger Stadium.
29:41So thank you for that.
29:44But on behalf of the Social Impact Fund and our board of directors, I am happy to present a
29:49check for $25,000 to CORE.
29:51Thank you very much for the recognition of our team.
29:53Thank you very much.
29:54Thank you very much.
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