Silicon Valley Leadership Group raises millions to fight outbreak

Companies like Adobe and Zoom have contributed to the advocacy group’s efforts

Some of the Bay Area’s largest companies and executives have contributed roughly $6 million to the Bay Area’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic through the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

Carl Guardino, the CEO of the powerful advocacy group, said Wednesday that member companies like Adobe, Deloitte, Sunpower and Zoom had raised $5.7 million in cash and more than $200,000 in medical supplies and equipment to help local hospitals and clinics battle the deadly disease.

“In my 23-plus years as CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, this underscores the cando spirit of our employees and employers who represent our innovation economy,” Guardino said in an email. “We have learned, once again, that when a door is locked, we check the windows — or build a new door.”

Guardino said doctors, nurses and other medical providers in Silicon Valley still need thousands of gloves, millions of surgical masks and gowns, hand sanitizer and more.

The group is aiming to raise at least $6.9 million — the estimate provided by the Valley Medical Center Foundation, which supports Santa Clara County’s three public hospitals and more than a dozen health care clinics but coordinates with private and nonprofit hospitals — for what is needed to cover necessary supplies and equipment.

The effort kicked off in mid-March when, during a virtual town hall with local business executives, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors President Cindy Chavez, Guardino offered an initial $1,000 personal donation and urged others on the call to match it. An hour later, the group had raised nearly $100,000.

The $6 million raised so far does not include donations that many of the companies that belong to the group have raised independently for medical workers near and far. Apple, for instance, is distributing millions of face shields to hospitals in desperate need of protective gear for workers on the front lines of the pandemic.

Assemblyman Kansen Chu, D-San Jose, has been coordinating the donation of masks, gowns, goggles and more to medical workers. On Thursday, Chu will join San Jose Councilwoman Magdalena Carrasco and others at Regional Medical Center in San Jose, which has seen more coronavirus cases than other hospitals in the Bay Area.

It’s not just big names and members of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group offering to help, either. The small Sunnyvale nonprofit Maker Nexus has rallied hundreds of volunteers to create face shields using 3D printers.

A Stanford professor, some of his students and medical experts from around the world have joined together to create a reusable, full-face scuba mask that, combined with a filter, could help protect doctors and nurses.

Even students are using their time sheltered at home to help out.

High school junior Delali Bruce has been helping the nonprofit Sewing 4 Good, which is making protective gowns for medical workers, by creating YouTube videos to show volunteers how to sew the garments.

The Santa Clara-based nonprofit has made more than 700 isolation gowns for health care workers in California and New York. But the group is seeking more Bay Area volunteers to help fill the more than 10,000 gown orders it has received.

“It’s so beautiful,” Bruce said, “to see that people like my mom and other sewers around the Bay Area can use their skills to help others.”

“In my 23-plus years as CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, this underscores the can-do spirit of our employees and employers who represent our innovation economy ... We have learned, once again, that when a door is locked, we check the windows — or build a new door.”

— Carl Guardino, CEO of Silicon Valley Leadership Group