Wallis Annenberg’s philanthropy was guided by a simple but powerful idea: give wisely where you can make the greatest impact and do it in ways that strengthen communities for the long term.
After decades of supporting arts and culture, animal welfare, education, healthcare, and public life in her beloved Los Angeles and beyond, Wallis began to focus on a question many philanthropists face, but few fully answer. How do you ensure that a vision for giving continues to grow when you are no longer here to guide it?
Her answer was the creation of the Wallis Annenberg Legacy Foundation in 2011.
At Wallis’s direction, the Wallis Annenberg Legacy Foundation carries forward Wallis’s personal and impactful philanthropic vision. She designed the Legacy Foundation with a hands-on approach as a lasting home for the specific causes she championed and the values that shaped her approach to giving.
From the start, the Wallis Annenberg Legacy Foundation focused on a simple principle: to carry Wallis Annenberg’s vision forward with clarity, intention, and care.
One of the earliest expressions of that vision was an idea Wallis began shaping in 2011 for an urban ecology and pet center that would help amplify the human-animal bond. Rooted in her lifelong commitment to animal welfare and her belief in the importance of the human–animal bond and its impact on creating healthy communities, the concept evolved into Wallis Annenberg PetSpace, the Legacy Foundation’s first flagship project.
Between 2013 and 2017, Wallis Annenberg directed the planning, design, and construction of PetSpace, a community center and adoption facility that could serve the LA region and help ease the challenges of the area’s overcrowded shelters, among other goals. When it opened in 2017, PetSpace reflected the broader ambition to strengthen the bond between people and animals in multiple ways, including through adoption, veterinary care, education, and community programming, while advancing new approaches to animal welfare and partnership.
“This initiative couldn’t be closer to my heart,” Wallis said on opening day. “The purpose of Annenberg PetSpace is to strengthen the bonds between us and all animals and pets, to save animals’ lives through adoption and education, and to help make our communities more animal friendly.”
In 2017, Wallis Annenberg turned her attention to longevity and aging, including the dramatic increase in life expectancy and its impact on the LA region and the world. She saw this trend unfolding quietly but rapidly. Moreover, she was bothered by the increasing numbers of older adults she witnessed spending their days alone in public spaces and saw that many places designed for seniors lacked the vitality, accessibility, and creativity of our modern times.
In 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau projected that within just a couple of decades, older adults would outnumber children in the United States for the first time in the country’s history. Yet American culture had offered few models that treated aging as a period of continued growth, contribution, and connection.
To explore a better approach, Wallis launched a research partnership with the Stanford University Center on Longevity. Focus groups with adults aged 70 and older made one thing clear: people wanted more than services. They wanted purpose, engagement, and belonging. That research by Dr Marti Deliema, then at the Stanford University Center, informed what would become the Legacy Foundation’s next flagship project, Wallis Annenberg GenSpace.
Planned between 2018 and 2022 and designed in collaboration with age-inclusive architect Susi Stadler, GenSpace was conceived as something entirely new. The design team, led by Wallis, produced a modern, welcoming environment built around how people want to live and gather together in a community space as they grow older.
When GenSpace opened in the Koreatown neighborhood in Los Angeles in 2022, it embodied Wallis Annenberg’s belief that philanthropy should innovate, not simply respond. GenSpace is now thriving, offering programming across health and wellness, lifelong learning, social and intergenerational connection, technology, financial security, arts and culture, and horticultural therapy, anchored by a rooftop garden that reflects its emphasis on vitality and growth.
It stands as the culmination of Wallis Annenberg’s vision for aging in the 21st century and a model for communities nationwide, showing how intentional design, thoughtful programming, and human connection can help older adults continue to learn, contribute, and thrive.
Wallis Annenberg was equally determined to ensure that the broader set of projects she cared about would endure beyond her lifetime. Nearly a decade ago, she began mapping out a long-term plan to continue supporting initiatives that reflected her deep commitment to civic life, community access, education, the arts, and conservation.
Those plans included continued investment in the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, the USC Annenberg School of Journalism and Communication, and the largest urban wildlife crossing in the world north of Los Angeles, along with other civic- and community-based efforts she believed should be supported for as long as possible.
Following Wallis Annenberg’s passing in 2025, that plan moved into action. In September 2025, the Wallis Annenberg Legacy Foundation announced its first major philanthropic initiative since her death, awarding significant grants across these signature projects while reaffirming its ongoing commitment to PetSpace and GenSpace. The moment marked both continuity and resolve – a clear signal that the Legacy Foundation would carry out Wallis’s intentions exactly as she envisioned.
Today, the Wallis Annenberg Legacy Foundation carries forward the vision Wallis Annenberg shaped with care and foresight. Through its flagship projects and continued philanthropic commitments, the Legacy Foundation serves communities in tangible, humane ways, strengthening connection, expanding opportunity, and protecting the world we share.
We are proud to support work rooted in compassion, innovation, and care, and to honor Wallis Annenberg’s belief that philanthropy should do more than give. It should open doors, create connection, and improve lives.
Not simply preserving a legacy, but putting it to work. Just the way Wallis Annenberg had long planned it!
“It starts with a deep connection to the cause. I have to give from my heart, first and foremost.”
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