The last seven years I’ve been living bicoastally, toggling back and forth from New York City then Los Angeles then NYC again. In 2020, I bought a car and drove across the country on a solo road trip because I knew that rebuilding my business, after Covid-19 ravaged it, I would not be able to thrive in a small apartment in a cold Manhattan winter. I needed sunshine, space, warm enough weather to walk outside and a playground comprised of nature the way only California provides.
What was intended to be a four-month period until the vaccines would be available and I could comfortably travel back via plane, turned into a three-year stint. I joke that I now know what it’s like to be The Bachelorette and in love with two people. Those people just happen to be cities. N.Y.C. gives me energy, urgency, creativity, style, grittiness and opportunity while LA provides natural beauty, a slower pace, deeper personal connections, delicious produce and the best Asian food in the United States, all among a backdrop of palm trees and snow capped mountains that you can’t believe is real.
My flight to LA was on Wednesday, Jan. 8. I was planning to be there to watch my friend’s dog and escape the NYC cold (again). After the fires began the day before and learning that one of my favorite restaurants I was scheduled to host a birthday brunch at the following Sunday had burnt to the ground and that two of my friends feared to have lost their homes, it was becoming clear this was not just another Malibu wildfire with superficial damage. With no Wi-Fi on the plane, I was left to brainstorm ways I could be of the best help and decided I could help Type 1 diabetics (T1D) get the supplies and medications they need.
After living with T1D for almost 30 years, I always joke that in the Zombie Apocalypse, I will be one of the first to go without access to insulin and insulin delivery supplies. I knew if I was thinking that, those actually in the middle of this disaster were experiencing it. After landing, retrieving the dog and setting alarms throughout the night to wake up and check evacuation notices for Venice, I knew strongly that I was here to help. When I opened Instagram Thursday morning, Laura Pavlakovich from You’re Just My Type posted about wanting to get supplies to people. I had been following Laura for a while and knew she was LA-based, but we’d never met.
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You’re Just My Type is a nonprofit aiming to create community for T1Ds, support their mental health and let them know they are not alone in managing this disease. Immediately when I saw that people were trying to individually help each other get supplies, I knew she’d need a scalable system. I messaged her and implored her to let me help run this. It turned out Laura was traveling in London for work, so we were somehow serendipitously brought together.
That day I created and took over the response for LA to get Type 1 diabetic supplies and insulin into the hands of those who needed it. We organized a mass scale donation system that enabled us to hand deliver medication and supplies all over Los Angeles county. A non-diabetic person may wonder why this was so critical. T1D is a chronic auto-immune disease that renders the pancreas unable to produce insulin. We need insulin as humans to survive and Type 1 diabetics must inject or infuse insulin all day, everyday to stay alive.
The supplies we need are regulated by insurance. In most cases we get 30 days exactly. That means no surplus supplies for travel or if anything goes wrong. We are relying on third-party suppliers and their third-party shippers to get life-sustaining supplies and medications into our hands.
Additionally, of late there have been insulin shortages and the disaster took place in January when many people’s insurance deductibles kicked in. The people who needed these supplies could not wait to move through the red tape. You see, as T1Ds, we’ve been doing this peer-to-peer mutual aid model among ourselves as a mechanism for survival but it was clear this was going to be needed on a much bigger scale. Laura and I were not going to let one person or family with T1D worry about this, on top of everything else, while displaced or dealing with the loss of their homes.
While as an event professional, I’m pretty confident I could take on and manage any situation quickly, efficiently and with a satisfied client, I hadn’t previously thought about how my event production and retail sampling skills prepared me for this moment. While working at Gap Inc., I worked on Gap’s first-ever mobile tour. I had to usher the process to turn a retro school bus into a roaming pop-up shop complete with staffing, ongoing updated inventory, a functional POS system (which in 2006 pre-dated mobile POS), tax compliance in each county, etc. While building the experiential division of Daymon Worldwide, I put a backend system in place that allowed us to auto hire event staff across the country, completing 40,000-plus sampling events in three years and deploying 1,000-plus event staff on any given weekend.
Read More: The Ethical Calculation of Hosting Events in Wake of Disasters
During my time as an executive at LeadDog Marketing Group, I shut down the Westside Highway for a 10k race, routed a seven-city, six-country global tour for a technology client and ran 50-plus retail grand opening events per year for a footwear client. When I started my company, FIT COLLECTIVE, which began as a partnership marketing firm in the fitness/wellness industry and has since evolved to create Employee Wellness Experiences on behalf of corporate organizations, I once again added to my toolbox skills that would prove advantageous professionally and as I would soon find out, critical in helping provide aid during one of the worst natural disasters our country has faced.
Within 48 hours we mobilized a team of 400-plus volunteers, received donation submissions from 500-plus people in 35 states and three countries, we collected CGMs, devices that monitor blood glucose levels, and insulin pump supplies, in addition to 500-plus vials/pens of insulin and other necessary items such as glucometers, lancets, syringes, etc. We’ve made home deliveries to 50 people all over Los Angeles County.
In partnership with the Culver City Masons who shared their space, we opened a pick up center for anyone to walk in and get supplies they need. The tremendous work of our volunteers and everyone who amplified and shared our efforts was extraordinary, with over 1 million people learning about our efforts via social media. We’re continuing to support the needs in LA and are now figuring out how to utilize this system and these supplies to help anyone in need. LA has a long way to go to recover but I’m grateful to have been here to help for even a small portion.
I have been doubting humanity lately. After this week, I know we will help each other and that humanity is going to be ok.
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Liz Van Voorhis is the founder and CEO of FIT COLLECTIVE, a consultancy focused in NYC and LA that creates wellness experiences, programming and content for corporate audiences. Part bad ass. Part cyborg. All heart. She has physically been broken down and put back together repeatedly and as a 25+ year fitness professional and Type 1 Diabetic, Liz personally understands how maintaining physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellness allows you to fulfill your greatest life aspirations.
