Who are We?

For the past 7 years, the Malibu Foundation has stood beside our community, building resilience in the face of fires, droughts, and extreme heat. Through every challenge, it is your trust that has guided our success. We are profoundly grateful for your unwavering support. Together, we continue to make Los Angeles County communities stronger.

With gratitude and love,
The Malibu Foundation.

Mission

The Malibu Foundation is committed to the long-term rebuilding of areas affected by climate driven disasters, including the Palisades and Woolsey Fires. Our goal is to ensure that Los Angeles is a place where people can live safely and sustainably. To achieve this, we coordinate with both the public and private sectors to achieve a wide range of environmental impacts, focusing on urban greening and community preparedness.

PHASE I: RELIEF

Provide immediate financial support to those most desperately in need.

PHASE II: REBUILD

Work toward strategically integrating fire prevention and building towards a greener, more resilient community.

PHASE III: RESILIENCE

We work in conjunction with communities and governments to ensure the continued resilience of our regions.

Team

Featured

Executive Director

Joe Flanigan

Executive Director

Joe Flanigan is a longtime resident of Malibu and the proud father of three boys he’s raised in this extraordinary coastal community. For Joe, Malibu is more than just a place—it’s home, a source of inspiration, and a way of life worth protecting.

In 2018, Joe lost his house in the devastating Woolsey Fire. That experience deeply transformed his perspective and drove him to co-found the Malibu Foundation, dedicating himself to helping the community recover and to building long-term resilience in the face of future disasters.

Joe’s journey to this role has been anything but conventional. He began working in politics at the age of 16, eventually serving at the White House. He later transitioned into the entertainment industry, where he built a successful career as an actor, with more than 200 hours of network television to his name.

After the 2016 election, Joe returned to public service as a volunteer political consultant and currently serves as an advisor to Democracy First, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to protecting democratic institutions.

Now, in the wake of the Palisades Fire, Joe continues to lead the Malibu Foundation with urgency and compassion—supporting fire survivors, advocating for sustainable recovery, and working to preserve Malibu’s natural beauty and tight-knit community for generations to come.

Executive Director

Denise DeGarmo

Denise DeGarmo is the Community Outreach Coordinator for the Malibu Foundation, where she leads local engagement and project implementation efforts. Drawing on her extensive connections in the Malibu area and a deep foundation in biodynamic farming, she leads initiatives that connect local communities with sustainable land stewardship practices. Her work bridges ecological resilience with grassroots action, informed by her experience founding Malibu Compost, a pioneer in regenerative soil health.

Featured

Jonah Hoj

Jonah serves as a GIS and imagery specialist with the Malibu Foundation. He helps chart out the location of potential sites by analyzing environmental data, makes both internal and external maps to communicate with the team and the public, and films aerial footage for social media. He graduated from UCLA in 2024, and holds a GIST certification and Part 107 remote pilot license.

Talisa Andrade

As part of the Malibu Foundation's GIS team, Talisa also manages the Foundation's social media presence, leveraging her background in GIS and cartography to create engaging content. Along with a Master's in Geographic Information Science from CSULB, Talisa graduated from Mount Saint Mary's University with a B.S. in Sociology. She adores everything vintage and collects records, cameras, mid-century glass, and books.

Taylor Morales

As a member of our Field Team, Taylor uses her multidisciplinary background in biology, ecology and environmental geography to oversee microforest implementation, monitoring and maintenance efforts. Whether conducting field surveys or simply pulling weeds, she applies her passion for California’s native flora and fauna to every part of the process. She graduated from UCLA in 2023 and is a certified UC Climate Steward.

Armando Berumen-Garcia

Armando has a B.A. in History and Chicano Studies from UCLA, but really developed a passion for climate action by volunteering for forestry restoration in his local community. He chose to work with the Malibu Foundation because, in addition to mitigating climate change, microforests also help resolve the disconnect and separation that our modern society has with nature. This term he aims to support the MF nursery’s development, work alongside our team to steward our already established micro forests, and learn more about how local, state, and federal governments collaborate on urban greening projects.

Aubrey Pevsner

Aubrey was born and raised in the Santa Monica Mountains on ancestral Chumash land. A kinship with the natural world has guided her life, through activism in her youth, during studies of creative writing and theatre at Johns Hopkins University, and while working to support sustainably-minded businesses. For the past six years, she has deepened her relationship to and understanding of local ecology as a nature educator in Topanga Canyon and Calabasas. Her service with The Malibu Foundation is motivated by a desire to have a direct impact on the land she loves while increasing access to native wildlife and mitigating climate change effects.

Nicole Bisente

Nicole graduated from California State University Northridge (CSUN) with a Bachelors in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and recently completed a post-baccalaureate program at Louisiana State University. During her term, she aims to improve science communication to bridge the gap between the scientific community and the public and support the study and maintenance of the microforests. She aspires to create interactive educational material to motivate and educate the public on identifying native and invasive species.

Board of Directors

Featured

Treasurer, Board

Drew Hayden

Treasurer, Board

Drew Hayden is a graduate of Stanford University and Boston College Law School. He has worked as a mergers and acquisitions attorney for national and international law firms in New York and Boston, an investment banker, and co-founded two technology companies. He currently serves on the Board of Top Box Foods and is active in volunteer leadership roles in his local communities. He and his wife Shannon have three adult children.

Treasurer, Board

Board

Shannon Hayden

Board

Shannon Shay Hayden is a graduate of Smith College and Boston College Law School. She has held positions at the National Hockey League and as a tax attorney at a global law firm. She raised three children outside of Boston, Massachusetts, who are pursuing diverse careers in filmmaking, cloud computing and neurobiology. For the last 30 years, she has been active in philanthropy in human rights, education and breast cancer research while volunteering at numerous and varied community based programs.

Board