UTA Partner Jeremy Barber Joins UNICEF USA Board
UTA partner and agent Jeremy Barber has been appointed to UNICEF USA’s national board of directors.
“I don’t know that there’s more important work ultimately than the well-being of children,” Barber tells me during an exclusive interview. “It’s irrefutable, right? It’s not left or right. I would tell you, I’m a Rockefeller Republican, which means I’m a bleeding-heart liberal and I’m a conservative with a small “c.” I believe we’re here to take care of each other. We gotta do right. You can’t step over bodies.”
In fact, before joining UNICEF, Barber was on the board of The People Concern, one of Los Angeles County’s largest and most impactful social service providers that addresses homelessness, poverty, mental and physical illness, abuse and addiction.
“During Covid, my three kids and I were biking in Venice,” Barber recalls. “We saw a shanty town, and I had fed the homeless when I worked in Washington, DC [he had a career in politics before making a foray into Hollywood], and I was like, ‘I’m not going to model for my children or anybody that it’s OK to let humans live on the streets.’
“I did a tour of all these boards, and the People Concern is this incredible board run by this Jesuitical guy John Maceri, who actually comes out of the AIDS battles, and what he discerned is if you combine social services and housing on site, you retain people, because a housing crisis is a social service crisis,” he continued. “If you just do the social services, it doesn’t work, and if you just do the housing, it doesn’t work.”
Being of service and helping those in need has been instilled in him since his childhood days growing up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. His mom was a leading education advocate and innovator in New York City, where she opened charter schools and launched free meal programs for kids. “She really didn’t believe any kid was responsible for where they were born,” Barber says. “She was a white woman who walked through the absolute heart of the Bronx with not racism in her heart or anything, but the belief that every child deserved a chance.”
As the world economy continues to be squeezed and international aid is being diminished, organizations like UNICEF have quickly adapted while still reaching their goals. “The work of UNICEF has never been more important or critical,” Barber said.
When we talked, parts of Venezuela had just been devastated by the recent earthquakes. “They are boots on the ground,” Barber said of UNICEF’s work in the South American country.
Barber is hoping to enlist Hollywood and the creative community to tell UNICEF’s stories. “Whether it’s the influencer economy, whether it’s the movie star business, whether it’s podcasts, we have a lot of ways where we can help both tell the story of things and push those ideas out,” he said.
In addition to Barber, UNICEF announced that Rep. Michael T. McCaul (R-Texas) and Jon Tester, former Democratic senator from Montana, have also joined the board.
