Tri Star Business Management CEO Lou Taylor supports high-profile industry charities such as MusiCares and City of Hope, but her philanthropic passion is reserved for smaller organizations where she can see direct results.
One of her favorites is Sally’s Rescue, a nonprofit in La Canada Flintridge, Calif., northeast of Los Angeles, run by Sally Cicchetti, dedicated to saving dogs from high-kill animal shelters. Cicchetti has teams of volunteers who monitor shelters for adoptable dogs. The pooches receive veterinary treatment and grooming, and are then placed either in Wylder’s Holistic Pet Center & Rescue in Studio City or Shelter Hope Pet Shop in Thousand Oaks.
“She’s somebody who spends her own money to save the animals, and every dollar she takes goes to the animals,” says Taylor. Aside from vet and grooming fees, “there’s no overhead.”
Across the country in South Florida, where Tri Star opened its first office 25 years ago, is another one of Taylor’s pet charities, Into the Clearing, a Christian nonprofit serving single mothers and their kids. The organization offers life skills training, nutrition and fitness education, and counseling. It also operates a thrift store in the town of Lantana that employs single mothers and provides professional clothing to women in need. “If you’ve got a single mom who has a job or has an interview, they give her the clothes,” Taylor says.
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Taylor also supports the nonprofit Onsite Foundation in Nashville, which serves “vulnerable populations,” including veterans, first responders, low-income individuals and front-line aid workers, as well as their families, providing grants so they can receive treatment for conditions ranging from addiction to PTSD.
“They also do an incredible amount of executive coaching with certified therapists, and I think that’s important in our business,” says Taylor. “I see too many kids who come up through the ranks of fame, and, of course, you’re going to be overwhelmed with your life if you’re 22 years old and running a multimillion-dollar organization. So I feel passionate about getting real therapeutic coaching for young celebrities who are coming into an enormous amount of wealth and relationships, because they can be instructed on how to manage life.”
