The CORE Matter: Mathew Rosengart Handles Legal Affairs for Sean Penn’s Nonprofit

variety.com:

Malina Saval Associate Editor, FeaturesIn February 2018, Mathew Rosengart traveled to Haiti on behalf of Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE), the crisis response organization co-founded by Sean Penn and Ann Lee to aid underserved communities and provide emergency relief in the wake of worldwide disasters.As CORE’s legal counsel, Rosengart, with the steady support of his firm Greenberg Traurig, has been there every step of the way. “My role, along with my great team, is to strike a balance, ensuring that CORE can fulfill its important mission on the ground while minimizing risk from a legal perspective,” says Rosengart. “We want to protect them while ensuring that we, as lawyers, don’t get in the way.” It was during his inaugural trip to Haiti that the attorney witnessed first-hand the country’s astonishing natural beauty as well as the incalculable, colossal loss suffered by its people. “It was about a three-day trip and — just being with Sean — we probably packed two weeks of experience and education into the trip,” says Rosengart. “It was a fact-finding trip basically to learn more about Haiti and the work CORE was doing on the ground there.” Staring out at the slum dwellings of Cité Soleil, an impoverished and densely populated shantytown located within Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, Rosengart became even more determined to help CORE in its collective mission to provide humanitarian aid worldwide. “It made me feel incredibly lucky, and also entitled,” says Rosengart of the experience. “It was like a splash of cold water in terms of making me realize how fortunate I am, and we all are.

It also inspired me.” Penn originally established the nonprofit (then named JP/HRO) following the massive 2010 earthquake that.