Leaders in entertainment, business, philanthropy, and the arts will gather at the 2nd Annual Big Sunday Gala on Thursday evening, April 27th to celebrate three distinguished honorees - Zazi Pope, Kara Corwin and Tichenor & Thorp Architects.
Big Sunday, the organization behind the USA's biggest community service festival, now in its 19th year of helping, will host the Gala celebration at Paramount Pictures Studios, 5555 Melrose Avenue, Bronson Plaza, Los Angeles, California beginning at 6 PM.
Big Sunday's ongoing collaboration with WME will also be celebrated on April 27th as once again, Big Sunday has been hired by WME to help them facilitate their global Walk the Walk Day of Service. Big Sunday will be with WME at The Compton Senior Center in California, while, at the same time, Big Sunday has organized 30 concurrent service projects in all five boroughs of New York for WME's 800 employees there.
Big Sunday (www.bigsunday.org) has been connecting people with opportunities to help, volunteer and give back together since 1999. Recognized nationally, Big Sunday is one of the USA's premiere resources for helping year-round. Big Sunday functions as an efficient and impactful clearing-house of volunteerism and community engagement, organizing and facilitating numerous programs and a host of unique ways for people of every age, background and means to volunteer and/or give, making it easy for diverse people to participate in good works together to support the huge variety of causes that they care about. The organization works as a resource that unites, hosts, and is connected with hundreds of individuals, families and communities. Big Sunday was started in Los Angeles and has hosted projects in more than 10 states as well as Australia and the United Kingdom. Each year, Big Sunday engages, empowers and brings together tens of thousands of volunteers from every walk of life. Big Sunday'smission is to connect people and build community via helping. Founded in Los Angeles 19 years ago by David Levinson with just 300 volunteers, the organization has now completed in excess of 1 million volunteer man-hours, and over 6,000 volunteer projects worth several million dollars in donated in-kind goods and services, and skilled and unskilled labor costs. Big Sunday is driven by the belief that absolutely everyone has some way that they can help someone else. Big Sunday events and programs have become more popular than ever, as people search for a way to focus on what we share in common and to celebrate Big Sunday's belief that we are all in it together.
All three honorees have actively participated with Big Sunday for many years.
Zazi Pope is Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Warner Bros., where she has worked since 1992. As head of the litigation department, she supervises a wide variety of lawsuits, worldwide, in the areas of copyright infringement, right of publicity, first amendment and breach of contract, among others. She also oversees Privacy, Data Security and Participations, and is involved in various regulatory, compliance and policy issues pertaining to the entertainment industry, particularly as they relate to the marketing of Warner's movies, television programs and videogames. Zazi was named one of the top 500 lawyers in America by Law Dragon, and was also selected as a Super Lawyer, by Law & Politics, an organization that honors the top 5% of the California Bar. Prior to working at Warner Bros., Zazi spent several years in private practice. After receiving her undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College, she graduated with Honors from Harvard Law School, where she was Managing Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law Review and co-founder of the Harvard Human Rights Group. Zazi is not only a member of Big Sunday's Board, she has led many Big Sunday projects over the years, such as arranging a picnic and visit to the Norton Simon Museum for a group of low-income seniors, and also a visit and picnic to LACMA for a group of homeless women and kids. Her projects have consistently helped people and also been great avenues to engage other volunteers. Zazi has donated countless items to Big Sunday for various distributions, and she has introduced a variety of new volunteers and donors to the Big Sunday community. Zazi has also been involved with Amnesty International, the ACLU, and the California Committee of Human Rights Watch, of which she was one of the founders and served as its Vice-Chair. She is a former Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Founding Member of the Pacific Council on International Policy. She and her husband Jack live in Hancock Park, where they raised their two children, Jeremy and Lili.
Corwin is an entertainment attorney with extensive experience in production-related transactional matters. As Director of Business and Legal Affairs at Walt Disney Pictures, she negotiated and drafted a wide variety of agreements for various projects in development and completed all Disney/Pixar animated film production work for three films that are currently ranked among the top 50 all-time domestic Box Office Gross Receipts: Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004) and CARS (2006). After an eight year tenure at Walt Disney Pictures, she began representing talent and consulting on various film and television projects as well as for Alpha Animation, Dreamworks Animation, Sony, Animation Lab, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, Disney Educational Productions, and The Baby Einstein Company. received her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and her J.D. from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where she served as Chief Articles Editor of the Loyola Law Review. is past president of the Georgetown University Club of Los Angeles and is a founding member of the Georgetown Entertainment and Media Alliance. She co-chairs the Community Service committee at the Center for Early Education; she served on the board of directors of her children's preschool, Beverly Glen Playgroup, for nine years; and she's co-president of the Parent Association at Marlborough School. Among the many local nonprofits Kara supports, including the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition, the Book Truck, and the I Have a Dream Foundation, Big Sunday remains her absolute favorite! has led a variety of Big Sunday projects over the years, including large-scale school beautification projects at places like the Kelso Ave. School, a Title I school in Inglewood. She has also excelled at engaging private school communities in Big Sunday activities, organizing everything from food drives (for both Big Sunday's End of the Month Club and its Thanksgiving Stuffing Event) to Valentine's Day giveaways with a variety of school communities. She was also instrumental in starting the Big Sunday Youth Board, involving students from a cross-section of schools throughout Los Angeles. , a frequent and popular presence at the Big Sunday headquarters, has introduced many people to Big Sunday. She enjoys taking her three dogs on long walks, baking, spending time with her three fun kids and husband (who patiently endure all of her zany endeavors) and occasionally reading a book (usually the night before her book group meeting).
Tichenor & Thorp Architects was founded by husband-and-wife team M. Brian Tichenor and Raun Thorp in 1990. Since then, they and their talented, dedicated staff have completed more than 350 projects nationwide. T & T is widely recognized for original, artful designs that beautifully integrate large-scale residences and surrounding landscapes, equally adept at commercial architecture, landscape and garden design, and historic preservation and restoration. The firm is known for sensitive, highly informed restorations of historically significant houses and landmark commercial structures by such noted California architects as Paul Williams, Roland Coate and Harwell Hamilton Harris. Among others, T & T returned the historic Cecil B. DeMille residence, the former William Powell Estate, and Hollywood's landmark Capitol Records building and grounds to their former states of glory. Listed by The Robb Report as one its Top 30 Architects, T & T work has been seen in The New York Times Magazine, Architectural Digest, Town & Country, The Robb Report, The Los Angeles Sunday Times Magazine, The World of Interiors, Elle Décor, and House & Garden, as well as on many television shows and more than 20 books. Tichenor & Thorp Architects have been a generous sponsor of Big Sunday for many years. In addition, Raun serves on the Big Sunday Board. Raun and Brian have led large-scale Big Sunday projects, such as a major renovation at the Salvation Army's Westside Transitional Residence, a shelter for homeless families. T & T have been great supporters of Big Sunday's theBIGlist, providing numerous and large donations of beautiful furniture, computers, dishes and silverware that Big Sunday was able to distribute to dozens of grateful nonprofits. Raun and Brian are native Southern Californians, and received their architecture degrees from UCLA. They live in Los Angeles with their awesome daughter, Ava.
Big Sunday was named by the Points of Light Foundation as one of "10 national nonprofits that are making a tremendous impact on our country's most critical challenges by mobilizing volunteers...These organizations also demonstrate a collaborative spirit through partnerships with other organizations to help strengthen communities across the nation."
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