Griffin|Schake client, California First Lady Maria Shriver, appeared on CNN today to promote her WE Connect Campaign and urge the nation’s Mayors to connect families who may be struggling with unemployment, foreclosures or mounting debt to a variety of available support services, including the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Food Stamps, the Child Tax Credit, Child Care Credit, and Women, Infants and Children Program (WIC).

As the nation’s leaders are discussing solutions to our economic crisis, Shriver has asked them to join her in a national effort to “market” existing government services and resources to increase the number of people who can benefit from them.

Tags: CNN, Griffin|Schake, Kristina Schake, Maria Shriver, Media Strategy, WE Connect

Kristina Schake was interviewed recently by LA Times’s Tina Daunt about Hollywood’s award season providing great opportunities for promoting causes and charities.

Only Hollywood could make a cause of celebrating causes during the season of its self-congratulations — or as the industry likes to call it, the run-up to the Oscars.

This year’s award season, with all its spinoff charity events, has been particularly intense. (Blame it on the euphoria over Barack Obama’s inauguration.)

Rested up after days of Washington galas, the industry’s A-listers — generally in good moods and trying to make nice with everybody else — have returned for another round of celebration and money raising. It’s a prime opportunity for socializing with a conscience. Savvy celebs and their philanthropy advisors know this.

“Award season for Hollywood is our election season,” said consultant Kristina Schake, who advises Maria Shriver. “It’s a time when people are naturally together and discussing the issues. For nonprofits, it’s a chance to get in there and let everyone know about the good work you’re doing.”

Read the full Cause Celebre column here.

Tags: Cause Strategy, Celebrity Causes, Kristina Schake, Los Angeles Times, Maria Shriver, Oscars

Griffin|Schake clients, stem cell activists Jerry & Janet Zucker and Douglas Wick & Lucy Fisher, were featured today in a LA Times piece about the opportunities for embryonic stem cell research in the Obama Administration.

Jerry Zucker expressed optimism for new scientific breakthroughs on all fronts:

Finally, science is legal again,” said director-producer Jerry Zucker, one of Hollywood’s — and the country’s — early champions of stem cell research. (Zucker and his wife teamed up on the issue with their friends Fisher and Wick after both families discovered that their daughters had Type 1 diabetes.) “We have fought for stem cell research, but we have also fought for science in general,” Zucker said. “Whether it’s to tackle global warming, a new virus or the supply of food for a growing world, we have to look to science.”

Douglas Wick shared similar thoughts on the prospects for change:

“We’re very hopeful someone in the Obama administration will say, ‘Let’s cure diabetes. Let’s cure Parkinson’s,’ ” Wick said. “It seems very doable.”

Chad Griffin suggested that the country needs to set an ambitious goal for defeating life-threatening diseases through stem cell reaseach.

President Obama can drive the scientific breakthroughs we need to solve our most challenging health crises,” said former Clinton White House staffer Chad Griffin, whose firm oversees the Cures foundation.

“This is a nation that answered one man’s call to put a man on the moon in just eight years; this is a nation that grew a small research network into the global Internet that is revolutionizing our world. The new president can now rally our nation around a medical Manhattan Project aimed at defeating the world’s most lethal diseases.”

Red the full LA Times article here.

Tags: Chad Griffin, CuresNow, Douglas Wick, Jerry Zucker, Los Angeles Times, Media Strategy, President Clinton, President Obama, Stem Cell Research