VX News is the editorial voice of the annual VerdeXchange Conference, featuring in-depth interviews with industry leaders and policymakers driving innovation in clean energy, water, transportation, and climate policy.
Wildfire Survivor Network’s Joy Chen on: Recovery & Accountability
Twenty months after the Eaton Fire, a pickleball WhatsApp group from the Altadena Town & Country Club has become one of the more consequential forces in California utility and insurance policy. The Every Fire Survivor's Network (EFSN)now speaks for more than 10,000 Eaton and Palisades survivors, and its executive director, Joy Chen – a former Los Angeles deputy mayor and Fortune 500 executive recruiter – spent the summer in Sacramento arguing that California does not have a wildfire liability problem so much as a fire causation problem.
The Cost of Waiting: Larry Kosmont on PCH, Disaster Recovery Districts, and the Infrastructure Gap
Recovery does not begin with rebuilding structures. It begins with rebuilding the infrastructure that makes communities worth returning to – streets, sewers, water, power, and the systems that make a place livable and investable.
That is the argument Larry Kosmont, Chairman & CEO of Kosmont Companies, brings to VX2026. With the debris removal phase of the January 2025 Palisades and Eaton Fires now complete, and an estimated $76 to $131 billion in property and capital losses still looming over Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Altadena, the question is no longer whether to rebuild…it is whether the financing infrastructure can move fast enough to make rebuilding possible.
Not Business as Usual: Esther Kim on Rebuilding Altadena’s Commercial Corridors
In conversation, Esther Kim, an architectural designer with nearly two decades of experience across residential and commercial projects, shares why she founded Altadena Village Partners, an emerging grassroots effort focused on rebuilding Altadena’s commercial corridors after the fire. She reflects on the group’s origins (mostly architects and planners), their self-funded recovery initiative, and the shift from traditional top-down visioning toward an owner-centered recovery model.