Alison MacCracken
is a visionary real estate strategist and community builder with over two decades of global experience in residential and commercial markets across the U.S., China, India, and Mexico.
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Meet Frank
Frank Renfro
is a seasoned software developer and entrepreneur with a passion for creating solutions that strengthen communities. He has built hyper-local, consumer-focused apps like Naybur and SoNeighborly, designed to connect neighbors and simplify local engagement.
A longtime resident of Pacific Palisades, Frank lived in the neighborhood with his family, coaches AYSO soccer, and serves on the Palisades Rebuild Council, where he helps guide recovery efforts after the wildfire. Driven by a love for problem-solving and helping people, Frank combines his technical expertise with a deep commitment to his community, working to make rebuilding smarter, faster, and more accessible for all.
Like our other volunteers, Frank lost his home in the January 2025 Pacific Palisades fire.
Frank has jumped in to help with the rebuild of Pacific Palisades by co-founding PaliBuilds – a site and service dedicated to help those who lost homes and business rebuild and restart – providing assistance across the full range of challenges that entails. See his efforts here.
Meet Merritt
Merritt David Farren
has spent his professional life where business and law come together, in media and technology. More recently, motivated by the suffering he saw in the Pacific Palisades community post fire, he’s shifted his time and energy to community service.
Merritt is currently serving as a party in the State Farm rate increase proceedings before the California Department of Insurance, representing the interests of consumers.
From Merritt:
I was born in Monterey, California. My father was a Navy pilot and we moved around a bit on the East Coast before returning to California, first to Ventura County and then to Woodland Hills.
When I look back on it now, I appreciate just how blessed and upbringing I had. We were decidedly middle class. We didn’t have much. Family vacations were camping vacations. Going out to eat was too expensive, a luxury almost never taken. I wasn’t on an airline flight until I was off in college. But we didn’t feel any lack. My friends and their families were in the same position, and there was never any talk of not having enough.
I attended first rate public schools that were among the best in the country. They had new buildings. They were clean, completely safe – even the bathrooms – and, with very limited exceptions, staffed by caring and talented teachers and administrators.
A Life Long Concern for Community
Caring about others was part of my family’s ethos. We went to church every Sunday and played an active part in supporting the church and its community. My father was a Sierra Club member, lover of nature and ardent environmentalist. He and I joined Sierra Club hikes in our local mountains and Sierra Club cross country ski trips in the Sierras.
Public service was in the family ancestry. My mother’s Quaker ancestors played an active part in the Underground Railroad in Chester County Pennsylvania and were related to Abraham Lincoln, a point of family pride. An ancestor on my father’s side was on the Mayflower and signed the Mayflower Compact – an antecedent to our own Democracy and Constitution.
In high school I was active in student counsel, served as Student Body President and received an award for being a student who demonstrated a love for learning through academic achievement and actively gave through community service.
It was my combination of community engagement and enthusiasm for learning that got me into Stanford. I couldn’t have liked being there more. I loved every day of my years there.
Stanford was a great fit for me. Students, faculty and staff were bright, inquisitive and open. They thrived on new ideas and new possibilities. There was a gentle counter culture vibe. An enthusiasm for being disruptive that was not just tolerated but quietly encouraged by faculty and staff. Thanks to that, in part, we had a lot of fun. It was not all work.
The Stanford culture valued excellence in all pursuits and also held a belief that those privileged enough to be there had a duty to give back. They should use their talent and the good fortune they had being there to do something of importance – something of meaning for others, for society. Making money in the years ahead was not what would count. Doing something meaningful was.
That ethic resonated with my own.
Law School, Disney and Amazon
My mother’s father was a lawyer, and not having another specific career goal in mind, I headed to law school after Standford. Law school was at UC Berkely, California’s preeminent state sponsored law school. At the time the State of California had the back of its best students. Tuition was $300 a semester. I left school with little debt. Something few students can say today.
I’ve spent my professional life since law at the intersection of law and business, with a focus on entertainment and technology.
I started at a law firm in Los Angeles known for its civic engagement and then followed a recruiter’s lure into Disney. When I joined Disney, I knew I’d long admired the company, but I didn’t appreciate what a radical rebirth its uber talented CEO Michael Eisner and President Frank Wells were just getting going there. The period of my 11 years there is now referred to as the Disney Renaissance. Michael and Frank took the company from zero to 60, breathing new life in to every part of the company – starting with new animated classics including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King – and expanding the company into whole new lines of business. What I expected to be a short stint there became 11 terrific years, during which I held posts in the theatrical film group, as head of Business and Legal Affairs for Disney Interactive and Disney Online and as General Counsel of the Disneyland Resort.
After Disney, I had the good fortune to be a relatively early team member at Amazon, where I acted as the lead lawyer for Amazon’s launch of its digital film, music and books businesses, acted as the main lawyer Amazon AWS for a period of time and for the launch of Kindle and served as the Chief Legal Officer of Amazon subsidiary Audible.com. I love start-ups and I had a chance to work on at least ten of them during my 11 years at Amazon.
At both Disney and Amazon, thinking big, relentless invention and reinvention, flawless execution and delivering for customers were the highest priorities. Mediocrity, lack of vision and incompetence were not tolerated.
With that background, you can imagine how I’ve viewed the lack of vision and incompetence that led to the LA fires and that has landed us in the insurance crisis we are now in.
The Greatest Blessings in My Life – My Family
My greatest blessings in life today are my husband of many years, and the two wonderful boys we have together, thanks to the miraculous medical advances enabling surrogacy created in our state and progressive California laws thoughtfully crafted to enable surrogacy. My son Sebastain Alexander is now 14 years old. My son Adrian Emmanuel is now 13 years old. They are spectacular young men.
In the immediate aftermath of the loss of our home, and every day since, minimizing the trauma of that loss on Sebastain and Adrian has been priority number one.
The engagement I’ve taken on in the State Farm insurance rate increase proceedings I describe on this site is part of my effort to support Sebastian and Adrian. How? I know the best thing I can do for them is model good behavior in a crisis. For me that means staying strong, putting a focus on others and ways I might help others, and working to pull positive change out of the crisis – ideally positive change that will make a repeat of the tragedy for other less likely.
You don’t just act for yourself. You act for the community – and the purpose that gives you helps you yourself move forward.