Why I’m headed to Sac and what to do if your ALE is set to end January 7.
I was honored to stand alongside these fellow changemakers at Leadership Pasadena’s 2026 Impact Awards. Photo: Eddie Rivera for Pasadena Now.
Today | Special Session Dead | My Winding Path to Leadership | Shape Our 2027 Agenda | Final Beat the Clock This Thursday | Insurance Survey Update | January 7 Housing Benefits | Around the Community
Hey friends,
First, congrats to incoming Insurance Commissioner Jane Kim! We look forward to working with her to get survivors the insurance benefits we’re owed and make insurance work better for every Californian.
This was supposed to be the week Edison and PG&E got their special session. They and their government enablers spent months lobbying to hand Wall Street shareholders a massive bailout behind closed doors. On Edison’s October 29 earnings call, CEO Pedro Pizarro laid out the plan: Get a bill to the governor via special session by November 15.
Edison and PG&E even threatened to cut back on serving customers. Their plan went the way of August’s ultra-secret 11th-hour gut-and-amend.
Dead.
Congratulations, everyone. It took an awful lot of us making noise to get this kind of quiet. Thank you to every legislator who listened to the real fire survivors.
I’m off to Sacramento tomorrow to meet with powerful interests, legislative staff, and the incoming governor’s team. We’re hearing Edison and PG&E are trying to revive the bailout as early as December, once new lawmakers are sworn in.
Thank God for Senate President pro Tem Monique Limón, insists on a basic democratic principle: Make any wildfire liability deal public with enough time for people to vet it and weigh in. Read more in POLITICO.
Meanwhile, Edison and PG&E lobbyists are running around crying that their stock prices are lower than before their bailout died in August.
Quick lesson in basic finance. If investors bid up your stock because they thought Californians would bail you out after years of unsafe practices and pick up the tab for the next fire you cause, a selloff is exactly what you’d expect when that bet goes bad. If you don’t like that, figure out why your executives keep causing fires and fix it. That’s how markets are supposed to work.
The L.A. Times and a Wall Street research firm went through Edison’s public CPUC filings and uncovered evidence of years of unsafe decisions and management failures leading up to the Eaton Fire. The CPUC had those filings for years. Critical safety work still went undone.
【From The EFSN Weekly, read about the wildfire safety work Edison collected money for but left undone and what Muddy Waters found in Edison’s own filings.】
Instead of a bailout, we need an independent, public investigation like the NTSB conducts after transportation disasters. With subpoena powers. Who knew what, and when? What decisions did Edison’s executives make, and why did regulators let the hazards persist? Until we know what the problem actually is, we cannot prevent the next disaster.
The IOUs should not be allowed to continue to spend billions of our dollars on so-called wildfire safety projects each year if we don’t know what changes would actually make us safer.
And when these companies burn down more communities, THEY should pay.
If this corporate monopoly model cannot survive without causing catastrophic wildfires and shifting the losses onto California families, preserving it should not be California’s goal. Changing it should be.
My Winding Path to Leadership
Last Friday, I received Leadership Pasadena’s highest honor, the Claire and Bill Bogaard Community Leadership Award. Bill and Claire have shaped Pasadena for five decades. Receiving an award in their name has made me reflect my own unlikely path to leadership.
One evening when I was 13, Dad mentioned that it was the night of his department’s Christmas party. I asked why he didn’t go. “When I go to those things,” he said, “I never know what to say to people.”
It hit me like a lightning bolt. Dad and I had the same problem: We didn’t know how to talk to white people! He’d come from China, earned a master’s in engineering at MIT, and was the hardest worker in his department. Yet he spent 30 years there without ever moving into leadership.
I was an awkward kid who desperately wanted to belong. That night, I decided I’d figure out how, somehow.
At 21, I moved to Los Angeles and met Maureen Kindel, a Palisadian who took me in and became my second mother. I lived with her here and there, first in Rustic Canyon and then in the Palisades Highlands. Maureen invested in me when I was an absolute nobody. She brought me into the rooms of power, and showed me how to hold my own. The Palisades became my second home.
At 31, I became a Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles. Then a corporate headhunter, recruiting CEOs and board members across three continents. Along the way, I started a blog about leadership. To my astonishment, it went viral in China.
A Chinese publisher asked me to write a book for women. I titled it Do Not Marry Before Age 30 《30岁前别结婚》. It became a monster hit. Suddenly, I was a celebrity author and brand ambassador in China, and I started a leadership training company. Maureen always worried about me in China. I found it exhilarating.
Here’s The Wall Street Journal’s three-minute video profile, calling me an icon for women in China.
The pandemic brought me and my leadership work back to Altadena, where I took up pickleball. Maureen died two months before the fires.
It’s still shocking to me that the two communities I’ve called home longest, the Palisades and Altadena, both burned.
It’s the honor of my lifetime to put 25 years in global business, media, and government to work for the two communities that have given me so much, and to pay forward what Maureen did for me. I accepted the award on behalf of all of you and the community we have built together.
If you’d like to read my Leadership Pasadena keynote, here it is: The Community We Built When the World Fell Apart.
This Thursday, November 5, 7–8 p.m. PT | Final Beat the Clock Webinar
Ask the Lawyers: What Do I Need to Do Now?
Still wondering what to do about your insurance claim? Bring the questions you haven’t gotten answered.
We’ll recap the major deadlines, then open the floor for live Q&A. How do you know if you might have a case? When should you talk to a lawyer, and what should you bring? How do legal fees work? What if you’re still negotiating with your insurer?
Presenters
James Lee, Raizner Lee Law
Michael Bidart, Shernoff Bidart Echeverria
Save your free seat for Thursday’s live Q&A and invite all survivors who could use some answers.
Insurance Survey Update
Thanks to the 2,001 survivors who shared your experiences, we’re planning two major releases of the L.A. Fire Survivor Insurance Survey results.
Early December | Findings to Shape California Insurance Accountability and Availability
We’ll release findings on how insurers handled claims, widespread nonrenewals, and underinsurance. We want California lawmakers to have this evidence in hand as they set their 2027 agendas, and we want to empower journalists to dig into these issues.
January 7, 2027 | National launch of the Insurance Scorecard
On the two-year anniversary of the fires, we’ll launch an interactive scorecard at InsuranceScorecard.org showing how every insurer has actually performed in the L.A. recovery. We plan to hire a national PR firm to help bring these findings to Americans everywhere.
You are invited to both launches! We’ll share dates, times, and locations as soon as they’re set.
Did Your Insurer Say Your Housing Benefits End January 7?
We’re discussing a proposed emergency bulletin with incoming Insurance Commissioner Kim directing insurers to extend the time to use our housing benefits to 36 months.
For now, ask for an extension in writing. January 7 isn’t an automatic cutoff. Under California Insurance Code § 2060(b)(1), qualifying homeowners can get up to 12 more months to use remaining housing benefits if they’ve acted in good faith and rebuilding was delayed by circumstances beyond their control.
Email your adjuster now. Include your claim number and cutoff date. Say, “I’m requesting an extension of my additional living expenses (ALE) under California Insurance Code § 2060(b)(1).”
Explain what you’ve done and what’s holding you up. Give dates and specifics. Are you waiting on a permit? Have delayed insurance payments kept you from hiring a contractor? Is smoke cleanup still unresolved? Attach whatever records you have.
Ask for a written decision and your remaining ALE balance. If your insurer refuses, ask for the specific reason in writing. Consider getting legal help.
Share your cutoff notice with EFSN.
Around the Community
November 14–15 | Volunteer for the Every Standing Home door-to-door campaign
Give 2½ hours to help EFRU and Surviving Structures Eaton Fire Recovery reach neighbors with information about smoke contamination. You’ll go door to door in pairs. Learn more and register.
November 14 | Second Annual State of Black Dena Homecoming
Join generations of Black Altadena and Pasadena from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Eaton Fire Collaborative to reconnect, celebrate the community’s history and shape what comes next. Learn more and register.
What Leadership Is For
At 13, I wanted to know how to get into the room. Maureen helped me do that. When I walk into a room in Sacramento this week, I’ll be thinking of all of you still waiting to walk through your own front doors.
To me, civic leadership means using your access to serve the people who will live with your decisions. Corporate special interests are spending big to make their case behind closed doors.
The utility bailout has died twice in three months. Its backers are trying to revive it. Let’s keep shining a light on it.
Democracy dies in darkness. Californians deserve no less than a government by and for the people.
Love,
Joy