Mary Fanaro, former event producer turned fashionista and humanitarian entrepreneur, founded OmniPeace, a L.A. based fashion brand that donates 25% of its profits to promoting peace, education, human rights and ending extreme poverty in Africa by 2025. Fanaro conceived the idea in 2005, while watching Live Eight, a string of benefit concerts created to highlight the urgent need to address global poverty. Fanaro has worked with celebrities Courtney Cox and model Naomi Campbell and she has a large celebrity following which includes: Jennifer Anniston, Sheryl Crowe, Alisha Keys, Eva Longoria, Gwen Stefani and Kimora just to name a few. www.omni-peace.com
Photos and video on Diva Maverick Mavens are provided courtesy of Mary Fanaro and permission of Sabina Ptacin Red Branch Public Relations. Angelia Miller is the founder of Diva Maverick Mavens www.divamaverickmavens.com a new bread of feisty, non-conformist adventure loving adrenaline-high entrepreneur. The tag-line is: Empowering Women by Interviewing Empowered Women...Inspiring "You" to Take Action! Casting exceptional dynamic talent for fresh content is the mission of Diva Maverick Mavens. The interview is in the original transcript form with minimal editing to preserve the integrity of the content. Can you tell us about starting your career as an actor? Mary Fanaro I'm from Miami originally. I was going to film school at the University of Miami. I was in a film writing class and my teacher asked me to go and audition for a film a friend of was doing. I said, "But I'm not an actress." He said, "I know but I want you to do this as a favor." Consequently I got the part and really never stopped working so consequently didn't have to go back to school which nothing made me happier. That was the time when all of these films and Miami Vice sort of descended upon the city and they were revamping South Beach so it was a really fun time to be apart of all that. What got you into acting? Mary Fanaro It was really that incident. I wasn't sure what I wanted to study when I went to college and to be honest I know that Courntey Cox was instrumental in your recovery from Ovarian Cancer. How did you handle recovering from Ovarian Cancer and chemotherapy? Mary Fanaro If someone had of told me what was going to happen ahead of time, the picture I had in my mind of what my life would be like after I got diagnosed was completely the opposite of what happened. I got diagnosed 2 weeks before I launched OmniPeace. I launched Omni Peace June 12, 2007 and started at 8 PM. The very next morning 12 hours later 8AM I started chemotherapy. I really didn't have much time to be honest with you to think much about what having cancer meant to me because I had worked on this company for 2 years before I had launched it. Everyday I lived and breathed it and nothing in my entire life had ever made me happier. The fact that OmniPeace was about to take off was so exciting for me albeit the news was untimely. I just showed up for what I had to do. I showed up for my chemo. I'd be in my office everyday working. I was having enormous gratitude for my experience because I was fighting for people who don't have health care or even water to drink. Their fighting for their lives and fighting to stay alive. I have health care and friends and family and great doctors and new modern medicines. Ovarian cancer is sort of under the radar for a while; it was not like Breast cancer by any stretch of the means. It was sort of a new cancer and I was stage 3. It was pretty far along and uh so I felt like the company really saved my life. It was an interesting dichotomy and not one that I thought it was going to be like at all. What did that mean to you to know that you had friends and family that cared so much and deeply for your health and your well-being? Mary Fanaro How are you keeping a balance between OmniPeace and your personal life to stay healthy? Mary Fanaro I have a pretty good routine that I follow everyday. I'm a woman that loves routine. If you mix meup and take me out of my safe pocket I get all befuddled. I'd wake in the morning. I'd go to the gym and workout. I'd come home, work most of the day and have meetings most of the day. I have to be honest it doesn't feel like work. I don't feel like I am working. I feel like I'm blessed to love what I do. It's not even like this is work so I have to take this time off to relieve the stress. Nothing makes me happier than to be in my office going over new ideas, campaigns with my assistant and my licensing agent. What are we going to do and how are we going to raise money? Who else is doing what we are doing and can we partner with them. It's just collaborations with people who are trying to do really cool and innovative, entrepreneurial things. It's easy for me to balance it. How did you get the idea for OmniPeace? Mary Fanaro I was reading that you had a lot of help with launching that from Courtney Cox and Naomi Campbell? Mary Fanaro Naomi launched it for me at "Scoop" in the Meat Packing district in New York and Courtney launched at "Kitson Men" in Los Angeles. When you went to Africa, had you ever seen poverty like that before? Was there a story about that experience? Mary Fanaro No. Never. Never. Well, I was really on Safari so I hadn't expected to see anything other than animals. The guide we had he was from there and his father was from there and one day he took us to what I think they called little refugee camps. There was a family of six living in these tiny, tiny I don't even know what you would call them and they were naked with there noses running and no food. The guy who was our guide would bring extra food from all of the people he would take on Safari. We had cooks cooking for us everyday and we didn't eat everything but unbeanosed to me they were taking the food to these people. I was blown away. I couldn't believe it. My grandfather many many years ago started a company called Archer Daniels Midland and today it is one of the largest agricultural companies in the world. I thought to myself. I'm apart of this family and without them we don't eat and yet why can't we figure out how we can take some of that a help feed other people. There are so many resources we have access to and I just couldn't understand why we can't figure out a way to share some of that. There are boats off of the Ivory Coast that could bring in food and I thought it was that uncomplicated but obviously not. I tried to make that happen but everyone patted me on the back and went that such a cute idea. How do you overcome the that's so cute objection to your ideas? Mary Fanaro It looks like you are donating 25% Millennium Promise with Jeffrey Sachs to promote peace, education and human rights. Mary Fanaro My first year in business was all about Millennium Promise. I had researched when I first started the company. I didn't know where the proceeds were going to go and I had researched Ox band, Red Cross and Bread for World Institute and all these places. They seemed so big and at the time all I had was a chocolate bar. I was thinking what organization was going to care about my little piece of chocolate. I had read this article in the front page of the LA Times about Jeff Sachs and his work was so extraordinary and seemed like the most progressive of anything I had read up until then. I just thought I'm going to try to get in touch with him and say that I just want you to be the recipient of 25% of these chocolate bars and I'll also get some great press out of them which will help you. He couldn't have been more grateful. I went to meet with him and his team. Not for one second did he make me feel like it was a pat on the back. It was we think this is completely innovative and we love this. Jeff had invited me to a big dinner. It was like the President of Rwanda (or some other country) and other influential people were working with him. We put the chocolate bars on the tables and he said it's people like this and this chocolate bar that really make a difference in the world just by being innovative and entrepreneurial and coming up with different ways to get people excited about what it is that we are doing. Of course that whole thing turned into a whole apparel line and that poor little chocolate bar has yet to get off the ground. How did you segue from chocolate into fashion and that logo is brilliant? Mary Fanaro What are the new projects that you have in store? Mary Fanaro The new campaign this year is Stamp Out Violence Against Women and Girls of the Congo. I partnered with a woman by the name of Andrea Kerzner who has an organization called Art of Humanity. She goes into shelters refugee camps and schools in Africa and gets them to draw things. She'll give them a piece of paper and ask them to draw 3 pictures their life before your incident, the incident-- whether it's a child being attacked or boy soldiers being taken off to war at a young age and having to kill and then the third picture which is about their hopes and dreams after the incident. If someone told you to draw your definition of hell it would be that and a 100X worse. You couldn't come up with this stuff when you think what a kid today ought to be drawing. These were the most graphic pictures I have ever seen drawn by children and so we took those pictures and arranged them into a collage because we couldn't put those images on a t-shirt. The images are so visually horrific that we put the collage inside the body of the OmniPeace logo and the back of the t-shirt is the story of a girl who is now apart of a movement called "Turning Pain into Power." The hang tags on the t-shirts are doubling as call to action post cards addressed to the president and that is why the campaign is "Stamp Out Violence." All you have to do is tear off the hang tag and put a stamp on it and send letter to President Barack Obama urging him to pass legislation to stop the war which is essentially over these minerals in the Congo which run all our cell phones and computers. You can get these minerals in other places but we go there because it's so cheap. Twenty five percent of those proceeds will go to UNICEF and Eve Ensler's organizations: Peace over Violence and V Day. How are you able to get support from A-listers in Hollywood? Mary Fanaro Tell me about the Kitson Primary School that OmniPeace supports? Mary Fanaro I went to the Kitson Primary School and told them listen you've been my biggest supporter donating all the proceeds from the sales of the t-shirts. Let's match my donation and build a school together because you deserve have something that is a testament to all of hard work as much as I do. I went to Senegal and we broke ground on the school. It's an amazing organization called Build On. You give them the money and in 7 weeks they go from sand to stone and you have a school. I will hopefully do it again. What kind of advice can you give to women who may have a dream that is similar to yours? Mary Fanaro When you want something bad enough in your life and your passionate, there isn't anything that can stop you. There are no obstacles. There are just challenges and everyday is a new testament to how much you want to fight to get what you want because there is always going to be money that you need to getting it going or getting it started. There will always be people that are naysayers. People will say, "Everybody is doing that. Why do you want to do that." There's a great quote by Albert Einstein, "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." I live by that. I think you have to do what you love because that will make you the healthiest and happiest and if you do get the opportunity to do that then you are incredibly blessed because not everybody gets to get up go to work and love what they do. Just give it a shot. I was going to start a chocolate company and sometimes it doesn't turn out the way you think it's going to be but when you are on the road to something good; It may swerve to the right and make a U-turn every once in a while but it will always lead you to where you're supposed to be going. You've gotta have that tenacity, that will power and that stick-to-itness that gets you through. There will always be excuses as to why you can't do it. There is nothing that we can't accomplish when we put our minds to it. Sometimes our minds can be our biggest adversary and our biggest asset. When your mind, body and heart are all in sync then there is nothing that can prevent you from having what you want assuming it's not a Ferrari, ha ha ha--assuming it has a philanthropic aspect to it. Here is the link to the audio link: http://www.divamaverickmavens.com/main/podcast.html all the classes that started later in the afternoon were the film classes so those were the ones I wanted to go too. One p.m. classes I'll take those and the rest just sort of fell into place. Once that teacher asked me to audition for his friends film I kept working. One thing lead to another job and then another and Miami came to be the place to work. I wouldn't say for serious acting but commercials were coming from everywhere and then Miami Vice. I must have done so many episodes of Miami Vice. It was a lot of fun and then I did a movie of the week with Courtney Cox and that's how I moved out to Los Angeles.
It's unusual because I've never been one to feel comfortable with an enormous outpouring of love. It's hard for me to sort of embrace that so clearly on this level. In the beginning, it was uncomfortable and then when I realized it was OK to be loved and it was OK to take all of this great affection and concern from people once I opened up to that; it was unbelievable. It was really a turning point in my life cause I had always been so standoffish to anything that was extraordinarily emotional. I also had an incredible boyfriend that I had only been dating for 4 months. I said to him, "Your barely my boyfriend and your not my husband. You can leave if you want to.I wouldn't ask anyone to go through anything like this." He said, "If we have to climb Mount Everest, we're going to climb it together." So, that was pretty extraordinary for me between him and Courtney who found me some great doctors--none of which I would have been able to find without her. She got on the phone and made some calls to people that may take a while to get into but she got right in. My first doctor said to me look your going to sick for the next year and you just need to right off your life. When your not at home getting sick your going to be in the hospital getting sick. I looked at my boyfriend that was in the room with me and I was like this is not my doctor. How could someone dictate to you what your life was going to be like? Who knew if I was going to get sick or not going to get sick? There was another doctor I wanted to get into to see and I tried and tried and I couldn't Courtney sort of made a call to somebody else and that person made a call to somebody else that made a call and I got a call that asked me if I could be their at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning. And so, yes, it's nice to have those kinds of friends in those situations. I ended up having a wonderful doctor and my experience was nothing like what that other doctor said. I was fortunate enough to barely get sick. I gained 20 pounds which is an unusual thing to do on chemo because you tend to lose weight. I ate all my favorite foods for my whole life all the time and I worked out and I swam almost everyday that I could. You get something call neuropathy from the chemo and I thought that if I kept moving and did something that made me feel good everyday. I tried to make my life as normal as possible and continued to do the same things that I did before. My boyfriend and I went to dinner and traveled. You know you are supposed to travel because they don't want you to get on planes and stuff but your just extra careful. It's not about being a superman but an effort has to take place because your body is getting thrashed. You've gotta keep healing your body and feeding until the next chemo. Everyone's cycle is different and you have a small window of time to recover and get your body together before you have the next session.
I'd been to Africa early on in my twenties and it struck me. It had a heavy impact on me. I wasn't quite ready to be philanthropic yet. There was something inside of me that said I would have to come back to Africa somehow and I had no idea how or or when or why. And almost 20 years later I was producing events in the entertainment industry and I just did the ten year anniversary of the Hard Rock hotel for my friend Peter Morton who owned a hotel in Vegas. I woke up Monday morning and I thought I can't do what I have been doing for one more second. It was such a definitive moment in my life but what I did know is that I had a talent for getting a lot of people in a room that the rest of the world paid attention to and listened to. I thought well what if I could be the vehicle between them and something that I love for them to get behind and involved in. Celebrities have an enormous ability to change the world just because of who they are and I think what Bono is doing is amazing today. Bono and Angelina whatever you want to say about any of those people. It is extraordinary the attention they have brought to people wanting to be philanthropic and humanitarian. Shortly after my decision to make a change, I was invited to Bono's "One" campaign and I thought that was a great campaign. He wasn't asking people for any money. He was using celebrities to do a campaign for people to raise awareness about Africa and African deaths. One thing lead to another and I met with a girl who had produced that campaign and we were trying to come up with an idea to start a company. We were at a friends house and I saw a chocolate bar. It was called the Endangered Species Chocolate Bar and it donated 10 percent of it proceeds to endangered species. I wanted to start a chocolate bar company and we had the logo on it and we were going to call it a peace of chocolate bar. One thing led to another and a friend of mine said forget it. Your never going to raise any money off the margin of a chocolate bar. Get that logo on t- shirt and get on celebrities and see if it even sticks and that was 2 years ago. Clearly it done a lot more than just stick.
You know it's not even that so much anymore. It's why Africa? Why not here? You have your own people here that are in trouble. And I also get what your trying to do is never going to happen. Africa is so far behind. I don't look at the bigger picture. What I look at is today and one human being. That's all I can sort of grasp in the moment. In Africa, you have women who have to carry machine guns to protect their family. There are women that are being raped and men that are being burned to death and they are just fighting for their rights-normal natural human rights. The government declared genocide but does nothing. It's still going on. Twenty-eight thousand children die everyday of illnesses that are related to poverty. I think it's every 30 seconds an African child dies of Malaria. I don't hear statistics like that here in the United States so those are sort of my answers when people say why Africa. Africa is what I'm passionate about. Somebody that is doing something for the homeless in Los Angeles I think is great. I just happen to be doing something that pull on my heart strings. It all goes back to that passion thing. We all have to do that thing that we are most passionate about because that is the thing we are gong to do the best and that's the impact we're going to have the most. I say if that is something you think is important than you need to find a way to address that problem because there is not enough people in this world to address all of these issues and make it a perfectly happy and peaceful place. God knows we call all try and I don't know a better healing power or a more peaceful place to live in when your heart is about giving and helping other people. It sounds like a cliche but I've lived it and I understand it to be truth.
The logo was designed by this guy Joe Patruccio. The girl I was going to originally open this company with he was the Godfather to her children and he came up with that thing in a day. Initially the logo was going to the like the number 1 so it was going to be the number 1 over the continent of Africa because originally we wanted to collaborate with the "One" campaign then in the 11th hour we thought, no, we want to do this all on our own. We were all sitting around trying to think what are we going to do with this logo and this guy in the back of the room held up 2 fingers and suddenly the number 1 went to a 2. That's what I mean by: Passion is God's will for you. In that moment, you could tell that the stars were perfectly aligned because it was so simple and the logo was 100X better because it was a peace sign over Africa instead of a number 1 over Africa. I told Jeff Sachs that I was going to donate 25% of the profits to him. The press that I got the first year of the business was extraordinary not only for OmniPeace but for Millennium Promise. Jeff and his wife are like my biggest fans and their like family. Every time we go to New York we all have dinner. His daughter Lisa is about to get married and he invited me to the wedding. They're extraordinary people and I am grateful and honored and blessed that I am able to be small part of what they're doing. I'm able to bring different things to the table. I did an event with them with CAA which one of the biggest talent agencies here. Jeff came out and spoke at CAA which made a significant donation to him and then I through an event for him afterwords at my boyfriend's restaurant. I also come up with different ways to raise money for whoever my partner is that year.
I will say that some of it is from my friends and most of them it's taken on a whole life on it's own. I have been incredibly, incredibly lucky. I think that if we are talking about the same show I had no idea that, that was going to happen. Hugh Laurie wore an OmniPeace t-shirt on the premier of House and I knew the producer of the show so that was a little different; Some of them I know and work with to get on particular shows. Haden Christensen was in my t-shirt and David Beckham at a Lakers game a while back and I had nothing to do with that. Sharon stone was wearing a t-shirt in the Atlantis in South Africa. Courtney is one of my best friends for 20 years, Jennifer Anniston and Sheryl Crowe--all my good friends. There are a lot of people on the celebrity page and I had nothing to do with that thank God. You don't want to keep going back to your friends to keep wearing the same stuff. They get tons of stuff to wear all the time. People are wearing the stuff because they love it and it's cool and they like what it represents. It means I'm doing my jobs. There wearing it because they like it and they've heard good things about it.
