View of the fires from Carol Rosenstein's deck in Brentwood. (Credit: Carol Rosenstein)
Checking-In With Female Founders After the Los Angeles Wildfires
We spoke with two CEOs in Los Angeles to see how they are coping after the devastating wildfires.
On Sunday, Jan. 5, Leore Oren was strolling through the farmer’s market in the Pacific Palisades with some friends. The residential Los Angeles neighborhood, tucked between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica Mountains, famously boasts some stunning scenery. “The Palisades are like a movie set – everything is just perfect. It’s so gorgeous,” Oren, co-founder of The Ceremony Club, a wedding gift shop, explained. She whipped out her phone and took a video of the idyllic scene, capturing in a frame the neighborhood Starbucks, which is housed in a historic 100-year-old building. Just three days later, “It was completely burnt down. It’s surreal.”
Nothing can really prepare you for the day your community burns. Another entrepreneur, Carol Rosenstein, who runs the non-profit Music Mends Minds, said the entire experience of the wildfires cut her to her core. “I’m a widow. I live in my home alone,” she said, her voice trembling. “It was like death was imminent. It was a cremation of neighborhoods to ashes.”
Rosenstein started Music Mends Minds, which provides musical support groups for people with dementia, after her late husband, Irwin, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2006. Though she said she has adjusted to some aspects of living without him, the wildfires made her feel “stripped naked as a human being,” as she realized she would have to figure out how to handle this disaster on her own.
As seven different wildfires burned throughout the city the week of Jan. 7, Oren and Rosenstein both packed their go bags. “A big conversation in L.A. always is ‘what would you take with you if there was a fire?’” Oren explained. “But people in the Palisades had one hour to evacuate. And then that was it. When you’re about to lose everything – what are the important things? I would just go blank.” Rosenstein said, “There wasn’t a go bag big enough.”
Both Oren and Rosenstein spoke of the intense anxiety and confusion that came with trying to decide if and when to evacuate. Oren, who has lived in the Valley her entire life, said she had never heard anything like Santa Ana winds that fueled the fires. “The first night of the Palisades fire, the wind was so crazy. It sounded like someone was trying to break into my house.” At one point, the Kenneth fire was just 10 minutes away from the warehouse where all of her inventory – her company makes modern wedding products – is stocked. “I don’t even know how I would go about [saving] it if the fires got closer.” Luckily, Oren’s home and business stayed safe.
Rosenstein, however, did end up having to evacuate from her Brentwood neighborhood, though her home survived. On the night of Friday, Jan. 10, Rosentein stood on her deck and saw what appeared to be a snow storm. “But it wasn’t snow. It was ash. I started to get layered in grey ash flakes.” It was then realized she had to leave – and in the dead of the night she drove to a relative’s home in Studio City. Rosenstein paused to consider the magnitude of the devastation. “We are at the mercy of mother nature. We are corks on an ocean bobbing. The GPS we set doesn’t matter.”
For 24 days the wildfires burned. But as most of the fires reached containment by Jan. 31, Angelinos were then met with the next stage of the disaster: Recovery. “LA gets a really bad wrap for the people who live here, but the community really did come together and go out of their way to help each other,” Oren told us. She and her sister Karen, who run The Ceremony Club together, said part of the challenge is figuring out the right way to help. “We create photo albums, which is a thing a lot of people have lost.” When we spoke, the sisters were figuring out the best way to donate such special items.
Rosentein wasted no time getting back to teaching in-person and online music classes – especially after learning that there were seniors in her music group who had lost their homes in the fires. “When someone arrives with their package of emotions…after 40 minutes of the class, they soften,” she said. She hopes the musical support gives them “some strength to be able to keep going.”
Rosenstein and Oren work with people in very different stages of their lives: Oren with folks who are getting married and starting their families, whereas Rosenstein primarily works with seniors in their later years. But both are in agreement about the future: They don’t know what it holds. In the Palisades, for instance, Oren recounted how a friend’s restaurant did not burn down – but everything else around it had. “So who are the customers now?” she asked.
Rosenstein questioned whether now-homeless seniors will want to rebuild. “At the tail end of life’s journey, do [you] want to walk around and deal with insurance companies and builders?” For her at least, the path forward will most certainly involve music and “the magic of how music can bring people back to themselves.” She put her hand on her heart. “That’s what I live for.” ◾
