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Noozhawk Talks: Jennifer Guess Finds Fulfillment in Giving

Junior League president and PR pro may be busy but she's having the time of her life

Jennifer Guess is president of Junior League of Santa Barbara and is intimately involved with several local nonprofit organizations. In her spare time, she owns her own public relations firm. (Lara Cooper / Noozhawk photo)

By Leslie Dinaberg, Noozhawk Contributor | Published on 12.27.2009

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If you want something done right, give it to a busy person like Jennifer Guess. This dynamo juggles being president of Junior League of Santa Barbara with volunteer work for Habitat for Humanity of Southern Santa Barbara County, Family Service Agency and the Women’s Fund of Santa Barbara. Oh, and did we mention she has her own public relations agency?

Leslie Dinaberg: Tell me about the Junior League.

Jennifer Guess: It’s amazing. This year has been such an incredible year for me. They’re just such motivated women, but I think the dynamic has changed because most of our members are working full time.

LD: That’s totally different than what I picture.

JG: Twenty to 30 years ago it was mostly nonworking people and they met at 9 in the morning. We’re a lot more flexible in today’s Junior League — we work on being flexible with our requirements and still being able to make an impact.

LD: Tell me about the downtown children’s library project.

JG: About three years ago we voted on a new focus area to improve youth literacy. At that same time we also decided we wanted to take on a new signature project.

Signature projects are bigger projects that raise awareness of the Junior League in the community but also get a community program up and running ... We decided to partner with the Santa Barbara Public Library and take the whole lower level — 6,000 square feet — and turn it into an amazing, beautiful children’s library.

LD: Was that something the library already had plans for?

JG: Yes. The children’s library right now is a very small area, and it’s just not on par with what Santa Barbara deserves and what the children need.

We are so excited to partner with the library. We signed our letter of intent last year. This year we’re hoping to sign our memorandum of understanding and hire an architect. ... We realized it was going to take a big fundraising effort, more than what we do normally, so we developed a fund development committee within the league, which we’ve never had before. But this is a new area for us and we realized we’re going to need to be working with a campaign consultant to help us raise anywhere between $2 million and $3.5 million.

LD: Is that amount for the entire project, or is that assuming some public funds are used?

JG: It’s still in the research phase and the feasibility phase, but that would be the complete project; the library has committed to a certain amount of support already and the city, as well. It’s been interesting also partnering with the city. There are some great people and (City Councilman) Roger Horton is actually one of our community advisers, so he’s just been a great cheerleader for us.

LD: It’s a great thing and we can definitely use it.

JG: While we’re still in the beginning stages — we haven’t gotten out the shovels and we’re not breaking ground yet — we are committed to our volunteer hours. We’ve already begun to do at least half of our community impact project with the library, so we’re doing story times, we’re doing arts and crafts days at the library, we did a Dia de los Muertos event and they’re doing a mother-daughter book club. What is so cool about this project is that it’s so not about the Junior League, it’s about the community, it’s about the kids and families and we want them to take ownership of it.

One of the statistics that was so interesting to me was that children of low-income families just don’t have access to either the resources or the information. By age 4 they will have heard 32,000 fewer words than a 4-year-old child from a family that has the support and the resources and has parents who are able to read to them. When you hear about those kinds of statistics and you know that on a local level we have fewer and fewer libraries even in our schools, it really is so important. And it’s just going to make this community such a better place.

LD: It’s an interesting time to be doing a library because we’re on the technological edge where things are changing so much.

JG: Our new members did a whole revamp of the Eastside Branch Children’s Library. We painted, we put in new bookshelves, they painted a beautiful mural, and one of the things they did was they bought a bunch of chess sets and it turns out that the chess is the most popular thing.

All of these kids on the Eastside are going to the library to play chess. It’s really cool that they’re still interested in that kind of thing. Obviously, everyone loves the computers but kids still are hungry for that mental stimulation that good old-fashioned chess can provide.

It was a great project. You should check it out.

LD: It sounds like you’ve got your hands really full with Junior League, but I know you have another career and other volunteer work. What are some of your public relations clients?

JG: Canary Hotel is a client of mine. Their restaurant, Coast, is a client. I’m working with a reusable shopping bag company called JP Monkey. Super fashionable reusable shopping bags; it’s very eco-chic.

I love my clients. I feel so lucky. On the nonprofit side, CALM (Child Abuse Listening & Mediation) is very near and dear to my heart. I’ve been working with them for a long time; I just think what they do is so, so important. I’ve worked on and off with a lot of different nonprofits: Dream Foundation, The Granada and Santa Barbara Maritime Museum. I’ve been doing work recently with a children’s boutique on Coast Village Road called Summer for Kids.

LD: Oh, that’s owned by the woman who is donating her profits to charity.

JG: She is amazing, Adriana Shuman, The store is a year old and she realized there was something missing, and she made the decision to donate all of the store profits to CALM and Teddy Bear Cancer Foundation.

LD: Good for her. You sound super busy.

JG: I am really busy. But I am so enjoying everything on the work side, it’s so fulfilling. And everything on the volunteer side is just equally fulfilling. The more involved I am with nonprofits the more I want to become more involved.

I’m also one of the PR chairs for the Habitat for Humanity’s capital campaign, the “Building Homes, Building Dreams” campaign. We are raising $3.5 million to build the second affordable housing in Santa Barbara, and we just found out that we’ve met 65 percent of our goal, which is huge in this economy. We recently learned about a gift that was made by one of the first families that moved into their very first project in town, so you see this coming full circle. They’re changing lives and giving these people a home, and you see how that makes an impact on someone’s life, where they were living in poverty before and now they are actually able to give a donation to the very organization that helped them.

LD: That’s so special. What else do you do when you’re not working?

JG: I love to cook. I love to run; running has kept me sane, it’s definitely a big part of staying balanced for me. I love to travel. I was born in France and my mom and dad I think instilled in all of the kids a love of traveling. I try to spend as much time with my girlfriends as possible. Family time; my family means everything to me. ... I love to shop, too. I would be not authentic to myself if I did not say that I love to shop. My guilty pleasure.

LD: If you could pick three adjectives to describe yourself, what would they be?

JG: A hard worker. ... Loving, I am a loving person; I love my family, I love my friends. This is so hard.

LD: I find that people who write for a living have a really hard time answering that question.

JG: Yeah. I could totally do it for all of my clients. I would be brilliant for my clients, but for myself? How about giving?

LD: You definitely are that.

Vital Stats: Jennifer Guess

Born: Dec. 16 in Montpellier, France

Family: Mother and father live in Portland, two younger sisters in Los Angeles and a younger brother in Chicago

Civic Involvement: President, Junior League of Santa Barbara; public relations chairwoman,“Building Homes Building Dreams” Campaign for Habitat for Humanity of Southern Santa Barbara County; communications chairwoman of the Women’s Fund of Santa Barbara, marketing committee member at Family Service Agency of Santa Barbara

Professional Accomplishments: Principal, Jennifer Guess Public Relations; former public relations director, SurfMedia Communications; worked for the Larry King Live Show on CNN; worked for one of France’s largest cable stations in Cannes during the Cannes International Film Festival.

Best Book You’ve Read Recently: I’ve read it four times and it’s one of my favorite books ever: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez.

Little-Known Fact: “In my next life I would love to be a CIA agent.”

— Noozhawk contributor Leslie Dinaberg can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Comments

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» Mary on 12.27.09 @ 09:34 PM

Thanks so much for profiling this lovely gal. Santa Barbara is so lucky to have people like Jennifer working for our community.