He prevailed on her to allow him and a colleague, Daniel Ellsberg, to duplicate a large document using the Xerox 812 machine in her ad agency. Among the goals is to provide a pipeline of workers to staff its increasingly mechanized operations. But the Resnicks water rights, by and large, are not senior. University/agribusiness complex exposed: The Resnicks' deep ties to UC The Resnicks purchased and tore down three adjacent houses to make room for a 22-space parking lot and half an acre of lawn. I am going to destroy you and make sure you fail. [7] Resnick graduated from Harriton High School, and the family moved to southern California. It is capable of storing 500 billion gallons [1.9 billion m3] of water. [38] In 2018, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles announced the couple's $30 million gift to help pay for a renovation and expansion project. Though wealthy enough to afford two Rolls-Royces and a 90210 zip code, he refused to pay for Lynda to attend art school, so she found work in a dress shop, where she tried her hand at creating ads for the store. [41] The same year they also announced plans to bring a charter school, Paramount Bard Academy, to the Central Valley. But after Maynard, 26, signed up to give reality show romance another shot as the Bachelorette, Hendrick's parents were "livid." "Now they're not speaking," the insider shares. But inside the marketing and product division that Resnick, 75, heads up, five former employees . In the 1970s, Stewart Resnick purchased 2,500 acres of oranges and lemons in California, kickstarting their entrance into agriculture. By Amanda Fortini. [31] Company executives credit Resnick with the choice to retain Roll Global's mandarin operations in 2013 despite strong competition from existing brands, and as the key architect of Halos branding. Meanwhile, the fight between farmers and smelt has plodded on, with the Resnicks becoming prominent advocates for pumping even more water south to farms. During the harvest, families arent able to take advantage of the distribution, one of the workers explained. by Robert Evans and Avrum Lapin, Bloomberg BusinessWeek: Company Overview of Roll Global LLC - Executive Profile Stewart A. Resnick, The Getty Trust: "Board of Trustees - Stewart A. Resnick", "UCLA Anderson Alumni Bulletin: "Stewart Resnick - Inspirational 100 Alumnus", "Pomegranate Juice Uncorked in Major Marketing Success", "starbulletin.com | Business | /2006/10/18/", "Hitting the Shelves: A Twist on Energy Drinks -- February 2009", "Published research on POMx shows similar health benefits to pomegranate juice", "Roll International Corporation Acquires FIJI Water LLC", "How The 'Wonderful Company' Is The 'Amazing Company' For Fiji | Fiji Sun", "U.S.: Wonderful Company sees sky-high growth as strategy pays off", "Wonderful Pistachios - Healthy Snackin - Get Crackin", "What the Fastest-Growing CPG Companies Do Differently", "JUSTIN Vineyards & Winery Named American Winery of the Year by Wine Enthusiast Magazine", "Who We Are Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy", "Paramount Farms Donates $4 Million to Children's Hospital Central California - The Central Valley Deals", "Los Angeles Business Journal Online - business news and information for Los Angeles California", "Lynda and Stewart Resnick Donate $55 Million to LACMA", "Hammer Museum receives $50 million in gifts for expansion", "Resnick explains $750-million gift to Caltech for climate research. The nut industrys nearly year-round employment has allowed farmworkers to put down roots. You have found Lost Hills, the slogan said. POM Wonderful LLC and Roll Global LLC, In the Matter of After the Resnicks family physician mentioned the fruits key role in Mediterranean folk medicine, Lynda commissioned scientific studies and found that pomegranate juice had more antioxidant properties than red wine. Copyright 2023 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress. Beverly Hills billionaire Stewart Resnick and his wife, Lynda, the co-owners of The Wonderful Company, are the Power Couple of Corporate Agribusiness in California, who have become virtual royalty in Last year, the Resnicks rebranded all their holdings as the Wonderful Company to highlight their focus on healthy products and philanthropy. Lynda A. Flowers 1957-2023 | News, Sports, Jobs - The Vindicator She was born in Lima, July 23, 1957, to Ray and Joyce Flowers. They can live with their families, send their kids to school, and start to grasp for the American Dream. We are deeply committed to doing our part to build a better world and inspiring others to do the same., But skeptics note that the Resnicks donations to Lost Hills began a few months after Earth Island Journal documented the yawning wealth gap between the couple and their company town, a dusty assemblage of trailer homes, dirt roads, and crumbling infrastructure. [8][9][10] While in law school, he founded his first business, a janitorial services company, which he sold in 1969. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start. [32] Known for its Get Crackin' campaign, Wonderful Pistachios was the United States' fastest-growing snack brand and the number-one tree nut brand in 2018. Photo Courtesy of The Wonderful . She won a Gold Effie Award for her idea to pair fresh flowers with a collectible keepsake container,[13] while her Mother's Day special on NBC resulted in another Effie win. I did one naughty thing, she told me. A gifted marketer, Lynda dropped out of college at 19 to start her own ad agency. They were expecting a smaller-than-normal crowd. In 2019 the company increased its minimum pay to $15 an hour for all of its California workers, three years ahead of the state-mandated deadline. Indisputably, theyre master marketers. The company's main product is pomegranate juice, which is sold in a trademark "double-bulb" bottle with the product name, POM, featured in capital letters where the O is substituted by a heart symbol. On a swelteringly hot day, three Wonderful executives took me on a six-hour tour of nearly everything that the company is doing to improve the lives of the hundreds of employees who reside there. The Resnicks have amassed this empire by following a simple agricultural precept: Crops need water. [14], In 2002 the Resnicks founded Pom Wonderful. Three weeks after the ad went live, Gov. In the summer of 2014, their employees quietly began conducting polling and focus groups to figure out the best way to sell Browns plan. But tree crops are different. In 2012 a federal judge agreed that some of the ads were misleading. If they truly cared about a sustainable California and farmworkers within their own community, then how things are structured and how they are done by the Wonderful Company would be much different., Lynda Resnicks friends, on the other hand, say she has found her calling. Will the duo repeat as All-Star Captains in 2023? Stewart and Lynda Resnick are agribusiness billionaires. Nearly half of all Americans purchase one of their products, including Halos mandarin oranges, POM Wonderful and Fiji Water. [7] Resnick founded an advertising agency, Lynda Limited, at the age of 19.[8]. A similar return-on-investment logic infuses the companys educational initiatives. The Iranian immigrant family is known there as major home builders, downtown redevelopers, philanthropists and entrepreneurs, as well as growers. By the fall of 1969, Resnick (then Lynda Sinay) was divorced and dating Anthony J. Russo, an engineer at the Rand Corp., a think tank in Santa Monica, Calif. Nobody cared. That was the case with their pomegranate juice, for which they made health claims so extravagant, they drew a complaint from the Federal Trade Commission. Why did you choose that?, Look, theres poverty and sadness all over the planet, Resnick replied, but I felt that if I was really going to do work, I should start to do work in the place where our employees worked and live. Lynda Resnick has been involved in many companies. [2] Resnick and his wife, Lynda Resnick, bought The Franklin Mint in 1986 and sold it in 2006. Assumed or forgotten is that some 8.7 trillion gallons of water will flow each day into the massive Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, and that 20 percent of it will get sucked by huge pumps into two giant, concrete-lined canal systems and sent hundreds of miles to Southern Californias cities and farms. Resnick Foundation - InfluenceWatch - InfluenceWatch They say Keven Assemi, the CEO of their farming operations, had a face-to-face discussion about the plan with Stewart Resnick on Jan. 22 this year. The states laws were designed to settle the frontier, and under the first in time, first in right rule, the most senior water claims are the last to be restricted in times of drought. But the real buzz is how they rent them out. No one cared about water, Lynda Resnick told me. All told, they claim to own Americas second-largest produce company, worth an estimated $4.2 billion. Lynda Resnick's eye for a product. Monika Bauerlein, CEO, and Brian Hiatt, Online Membership Director. Listen on Apple Podcasts. Dubbed the Pentagon Papers, they detailed aspects of the war hidden from the public and damaged the credibility of the presidents involved. She was struggling to keep things afloat. Two years later, with a federal judge now restricting Delta pumping for the sake of the smelt, the Resnicks began raising their concerns with friends in Washington. By the time she was 24, shed launched her own advertising agency, Lynda Limited, given birth to three children, and gotten divorced. And heres a key fact to consider against this backdrop: The Resnicks arent just pumping to irrigate their fruit and nut treestheyre also in the business of farming water itself. By 1996, their agricultural company, Paramount Farms, had become the worlds largest producer and packager of pistachios and almonds, with sales of about $1.5 billion; it now owns 130,000 acres of farmland and grosses $4.8 billion. The issue has become more inclusive when selecting models. Its unclear how much money is actually at stake. Theyve turned Fiji Water into a lifestyle brand, even though the water is shipped 5,500 miles from a Pacific island country with a history of repressive dictatorship and the lack of clean drinking water for much of its 900,000 population. The Resnicks acquired the Fiji Water business in 2004,[25] after which Lynda supervised marketing that focused on promoting the uniqueness and exotic nature of the water. Pomegranate Princess | The New Yorker Brown held a press conference in which he rebranded his plan as the California Water Fix. At first, it was classic civic gifts: $15 million to found UCLAs Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital; $35 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for an exhibition space designed by Renzo Piano and dubbed the Resnick Pavilion; $20 million for the Resnick Sustainability Institute at Caltech, which focuses on making the breakthroughs that will change the balance of the worlds sustainability. (Wonderful claims to have developed an almond tree that has 30 percent higher yields than a conventional tree, using the same amount of water. Over the last decade, Californias almond acreage has increased by 47 percent and its pistachio acreage has doubled, fueled in the latter case by the Resnicks advertising genius. Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) will step down from his seat in Congress, the Salt Lake Tribune and Politico reported Tuesday, narrowing the GOPs control in the House of Representativesthough Stewart has not publicly announced any resignation plans. So like other farmers, the Resnicks have turned to the states dwindling reserve of groundwater, sinking wells hundreds of feet deep on their land. [17], The Resnicks acquired the Fiji Water business in 2004,[18] increasing sales of Fiji Water by 300%[13] in 4 years, making it the largest imported bottled water brand in the US. She had just been confronted while watering her lawn in Santa Monica by one of the amateur videographers behind last summers hottest new California film genre: the drought-shaming video. Terms of Service apply. A Tulare County judge has rejected efforts by Beverly Hills billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick to halt the expansion of a pistachio processing plant owned in Terra Bella by the Assemi family of Fresno. In 1985, they acquired the Franklin Mint, which at the time mainly sold commemorative coins and medallions. [9] Resnick was designated an un-indicted co-conspirator for her role and pursued by prosecutors for two years. In the works for 20 years, Arax's phenomenal story, "A Kingdom From Dust," profiles Stewart and Lynda Resnick, billionaires who grow almonds, pistachios, citrus and pomegranates on desert land they have never tilled or irrigated themselves, land that taxpayers and state and federal water have helped them turn into a dangerous and lucrative agric. Lost Hills is extreme in every possible way, says Juan-Vicente Palerm, an anthropologist at the University of California-Santa Barbara. A new environmental review is due next month, and a coalition of environmental groups and water agencies is suing to return the water bank to public ownership. As I reported at the time, the clear-cutting, which was halted by San Luis Obispo County soon after its discovery, left hillsides bare and gray, denuded of vegetation and vulnerable to storm-fed erosion. If youve watched Chinatown or read Cadillac Desert, you know something about Californias complicated and often corrupt 100-year-old fight over water rights. The Kern Water Bank gave them the ability to store this water and sell it back to the state at a premium in times of drought. It is capable of storing 500 billion gallons [1.9billionm3] of water. Lynda and Stewart met for the first time in the 1960s. The company also manufactures blended juice beverages, such as pomegranate juice mixed with juices of blueberry, cranberry, cherry, mango or tangerine, and bottled tea- and coffee-based beverages of various flavors distributed in more conventional containers. Few farmers are more at risk from the cutbacks than the Resnicks, whose 140 square miles of orchards use about 117 billion gallons of water a year, despite employing cutting-edge conservation technologies. As Vice-Chair and co-owner of Teleflora's holding company, Resnick has been involved with securing flagship TV sponsorship roles. There are all sorts of costs related to poor health, Stewart Resnick said at the Aspen Institute in July. We walked through the parks emerald lawn to see its huge water tower, painted with a mural depicting two hills. [8] Through this holding company he and his wife own the POM Wonderful and Fiji Water brands, Wonderful Halos, Wonderful Pistachios and Almonds, JUSTIN Wines, Landmark Wines, JNSQ Wines, Suterra Pest Control[11] and the Teleflora floral wire service company. The couple's philanthropy is diverse and interests include the arts, public health, and policy. The Wonderful Company, the corporate arm of Beverly Hills billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick, promotes itself incessantly as an exemplar of social responsibility and a guardian of sustainable agriculture. [21][22][23] Resnick designed the POM Wonderful logo, and her design team developed an hourglass-shape bottle,[24] the company later expanding into other liquid products and pills. Martha Stewart can officially add "swimsuit model" to her impressive resume, and her iconic moment in front of the camera has some surprising takeaways for working moms. "[49] They have partnered with the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project to bring water to Kern County spending $35 million in recent years buying up more water from nearby districts to replenish the Central Valley's supplies. In 1997 Tiger Woods successfully stopped the Franklin Mint from selling a commemorative medal of his win in the 1997 Masters Tournament. Having shrewdly maneuvered the backroom politics of Californias byzantine water rules, they are now thought to consume more of the states water than any other family, farm, or company. There are laws on the books to prevent that from happening, but Central Valley farmers are working diligently to overturn those laws. Theyre more like the business in agribusiness.. During a recent Chicagoland tour stop, Police drummer and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Stewart Copeland reworked the music of The Police, backed on stage by a full orchestra. This means some farmers are still able to flood their fields to grow cattle feed, even as residents of towns such as Okieville and East Porterville have to truck in water and shower using buckets. Stewart hired her to work for his janitorial business. It's us but for your ears. "They don't want . In exchange, they got ownership of the Kern Water Bank, a naturally occurring underground reservoir that lies beneath 32 square miles of Kern County, which sits toward the southern end of the Central Valley. Martha Stewart on the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover says a lot about the changing narrative on ageing. We need people who care enough about Mother Jones journalism to be reading a blurb like this to decide to pitch in and support it if you can right now. "[58] In May 2016 the Supreme Court declined to take the case.[60]. In the Matter of POM Wonderful LLC and Roll Global LLC, as successor in interest to Roll International Corporation, companies, and Stewart A. Resnick, Lynda Rae Resnick, and Matthew Tupper, individually and as officers of the companies FTC Matter/File Number 082 3122 Docket Number 9344 Related Cases POM Wonderful LLC, et al. #108 Forbes 400 (2021) Dropped off in 2022 Personal Stats Source of Wealth agriculture, water, Self Made Self-Made Score 8 Philanthropy Score 3 Residence Beverly Hills, California Citizenship. Stewart capitalized on his wifes marketing prowess. And this next one simply has to be a year of growthparticularly for donations from online readers to help counter the brutal economics of journalism right now. By 2000, Tijerina and her husband had scraped together enough money to qualify for a USDA loan that helped them buy 330 acres of wheat fields a few miles outside town. After the fall harvest comes winter pruning, spring pest management, and summer watering and mowing. Straight up: We need this pitch, what you're reading right now, to start earning significantly more donations than normal. In 2009 they announced the opening of a pre-school billed as one of the first in the US to be environmentally friendly. Thats where things apparently stand at the moment. Case Timeline This year 81-year old Martha Stewart is one of four models on the cover of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Starting the night of Oct. 1, Russo, Ellsberg and various helpers copied 7,000 pages of the government-ordered secret history of America's involvement in Vietnam: the Pentagon Papers. Something would have to change, and fast. They control Fiji Water, Justin Vineyards and the florist delivery service Teleflora, among other enterprises. Pom was an overnight sensation, doing millions of dollars in sales by the end of the following yearand cementing Resnicks status as a marketing genius. Lynda and Stewart Resnick have donated an additional $2.375 million to UCLA School of Law to strengthen the research and educational resources of the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy. [39], In September 2019, Resnick and his wife pledged their largest donation to date, a $750 million endowment to Caltech for climate research. These are the states poorest workers, and they moved to Lost Hills because that was the cheapest place to live.. [8], The Resnicks purchased The Franklin Mint in 1986 and expanded the company's collectibles business through new licensing agreements. [3] Since 1979 Resnick has been the chairman and president of The Wonderful Company. [7][46], In an effort to make their impact on the region more positive, the Resnicks have invested in the growth of the local economy and nutrition centers. [41], He is divorced from his first wife,[5] Sandra Frazier. In October 2015, the Resnicks asked the Supreme Court to take the case. In 2016, the latest year reported by the foundation, the Assemis owed about $35 million on a $45-million loan originated in August 2016. The Wonderful Company: Taking Farming To Another Level! [17] Also during her tenure, licensing was arranged for products related to the Louvre art museum in Paris, the Vatican,[18] board games like Monopoly and Scrabble, classic cars, and famous people like John Wayne, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn Monroe. Some foreign conservationists criticize the Resnicks for "hogging the archipelago's precious water supply while island natives didn't always have water to drink themselves, due to crumbling and insufficient infrastructure. That brings us back to the lawsuit, which has its genesis in the Assemis decision to break away from the Wonderful pistachio growers cooperative and build their own pistachio processing plant. The Wonderful Company :: Stewart Resnick Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox. [50] In 2018, the Resnicks donated $2.5 million to the Fresno Community Food Bank, the largest donation the agency has received in its 26-year history. [35] Lynda Resnick described the brand as "created specifically for millennial women and older Gen Z'ers and the milestones they are celebrating in their blossoming and exhilarating lives. [36] She is a trustee emeritus of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Lynda Resnick is to branding what Warren Buffett is to investing, Gloria Steinem wrote in 2009, in one of dozens of celebrity blurbs for Rubies in the Orchard. So in 1995, state officials agreed to a deal or, as it has been suggested, a staggering giveaway. (The Resnicks have given more than $18,000 to Valadaos campaigns since 2011.) They made a $4 million donation to Children's Hospital Central California in 2006. Resnick is married to Stewart Resnick, who is her business partner, and through their holding company The Wonderful Company, they own the POM Wonderful and Fiji Water brands, Wonderful Pistachios and Almonds, Wonderful Halos, JUSTIN Wines, Landmark Wines, JNSQ Wines and the Teleflora floral wire service company. Around that time, Lynda started dating Anthony Russo, who worked at a think tank with military analyst Daniel Ellsberg. And it all happened after she offered to help him market his business of alarms. No one familiar with the works of John Steinbeck would think of California farming as a cool and clean enterprise. [42] He has three children from his first marriage: Jeff Resnick, Ilene Resnick, and Bill Resnick; and two stepchildren from his marriage to Harris: Jason Sinay and Jonathan Sinay. America's Nuttiest Billionaire Couple: Amid Drought, Stewart And Lynda Born in Highland Park, New Jersey, the son of a Yiddish-speaking Ukrainian bartender, Stewart paid his way through UCLA by working as a janitor and . It will reach 2,000 students in four years. Resnick's second marriage is to Stewart Resnick, who is also her business partner. ), The loans current status couldnt be learned, but Farid Assemi, the family firms president, told the Wall Street Journal last year that he had asked for the loan as a way for the foundation to use idle cash. Black Americans will spend $800 billion more on consumer products in 2030 than they did almost decade before, according to McKinsey. The Resnicks also have chipped in another $250,000 to support Browns pet ballot measure to fund education. The Central Valley is in some respects the ideal place to grow fruit and nut trees, with its Mediterranean combination of cool winters and hot summers perfectly promoting flowering, fruit setting, and ripening. [23] In 2017, Halos accounted for around three-quarters of growth in the mandarin category, and 12% of total produce sales growth. It started with the Wonderful Scholar Program for students whoworked for Wonderful, now eclipsing 1,100 recipients 90 percent the first generation in their family to go to college. And now that people have to cut back on their water, all of a sudden it has become important.. Inside A Billionaire Bee Colony - Forbes [2] Resnick and his wife, Lynda Resnick, bought The Franklin Mint in 1986 and sold it in 2006. When he needed some advertising work, a friend recommended Lyndas agency. OVERVIEW: Stewart and Lynda Resnick move philanthropy through the Resnick Family Foundation, which gave away around $26 million in a recent year. In 2012 a federal judge agreed that some of the ads were misleading. Meet the California couple who uses more water than every home in Los Stewart, who was first elected in 2012, reportedly plans to resign as his wife struggles with an undisclosed health issue. Because it is, and because we're fresh off finishing a fiscal year, on June 30, that came up a bit short of where we needed to be. They had two children: Jason Sinay and Jonathan Sinay. Because corporations, powerful people with deep pockets, and market forces will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. As previously reported in Mother Jones, she marketed Fijis living water as a healthier alternative to tap water, which the company claimed could contain 4,000 contaminants. She has pushed the cardiovascular benefits of almonds, touted mandarin oranges as a healthy snack option for kids, and called nutrient-dense pistachios the skinny nut. Her $15 million Get Crackin' campaign, the largest media buy in the history of snack nuts, included a Super Bowl ad starring Stephen Colbert. POM positioned its product as almost a magic elixir health in a bottle and even put up billboards with the words Cheat Death next to a picture of the bottle. The trial revealed that he and Russo had spent two weeks in all-night sessions photocopying the Pentagon Papers in Lyndas office on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Tijerina, a 74-year-old former cotton picker and veteran school board member, apologized for the superintendenthe must have had another important meetingand for the fact that her own voice was faint; she had cancer. The lawsuit says that the health of the crop is threatened by Wonderfuls delaying tactics: Wonderful knows that time is of the essence because the crop must be harvested now each day of delay raises the prospect of a condition known as shell staining, which reduces the crops value.
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