Jeremy Barber, partner and agent at UTA, has been appointed National Director of UNICEF USA.
“I don’t know of any job that is ultimately more important than the well-being of children,” Barber told me in an exclusive interview. “This is an irrefutable story, right? I’m neither right nor left. Let me tell you, I’m a Rockefeller Republican: a bleeding-heart liberal and a conservative with a little ‘C.’ I believe we are here to care for each other. We have to do it right. Do not step over a corpse. ”
In fact, before joining UNICEF, Mr. Barber served on the board of People Concern, one of Los Angeles County’s largest and most influential social service providers addressing homelessness, poverty, mental and physical illness, abuse, and addiction.
“During the coronavirus pandemic, my three kids and I were riding bikes in Venice,” Barber recalled. “We had seen the slums and fed the homeless when I was working in Washington, D.C. (he had a career in politics before going into Hollywood), and I thought, ‘I’m not going to set an example for my kids or anyone else that it’s OK to let people live on the streets.’
“I’ve been around all these committees, and People Concern is a great committee run by John Maselli, a Jesuit who actually rose out of the fight against AIDS. And what he found is that when you combine social services with on-site housing, you can keep people, because the housing crisis is a social services crisis,” he continued. “It won’t work if we only do social services, and it won’t work if we only do housing.”
The love of service and helping those in need was instilled in him from an early age growing up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. His mother was an education advocate and innovator in New York City, where she opened a charter school and launched a free meal program for children. “She didn’t believe that any child was responsible for where they were born,” Barber says. “She was a white woman who walked through the absolute heart of the Bronx with the belief that there was no racism in her heart and that every child deserved a chance.”
As the global economy continues to tighten and international aid declines, organizations like UNICEF have adapted quickly while achieving their goals. “UNICEF’s work has never been more relevant and important,” Mr. Barber said.
When we spoke, parts of Venezuela had just been devastated by recent earthquakes. “They are boots on the ground,” Barber said of UNICEF’s work in the South American country.
Barber wants Hollywood and the creative community to tell UNICEF’s story. “Whether it’s the influencer economy, whether it’s the movie star business, whether it’s podcasts, we have a lot of ways that we can both help tell the story of things and spread those ideas,” he said.
In addition to Barber, UNICEF announced that Congressman Michael T. McCaul (R-Texas) and former Democratic senator Jon Tester from Montana have joined its board.
