Candidate for
Council Member; City of Beverly Hills

John grew up in Beverly Hills as a 4th generation resident. His grandfather and great uncle were legendary movie producers Harold and Walter Mirisch, respectively, whose companies won or were nominated for numerous Oscars for such timeless movies as West Side Story, Some Like it Hot, the Magnificent Seven, In the Heat of the Night and many more.

From K through 12, John attended Hawthorne and Beverly Hills High School, where he was active in journalism and forensics (in the days when the High School still had a forensics program).

After graduating from Yale magna cum laude in 1985, John followed in his grandfather's footsteps by going to work in international film distribution with 20th Century Fox International, a position in which he gained broad distribution and marketing experience in territories worldwide.

United International Pictures, the foreign distribution arm of Paramount, Universal and MGM, then brought John on board to become the Managing Director of their Austrian office. After five years and record results at UIP in Austria, John moved to Stockholm to take the reins at UIP's struggling Swedish office. As Managing Director of UIP in Sweden, John quickly turned the Swedish operation into one of the organization's top-performers and released numerous successful titles over the course of eight years, generating record profits in the process.

As his reputation for producing smart, fair business deals that work for all parties grew, John was selected to serve on the boards of a number of Industry trade organizations, such as the Austrian and Swedish Film Distributors' Associations and the Swedish Academy Awards Selection Committee. John currently runs international sales and strategy for a major Hollywood studio, working with territory offices and sub-distributors in over 60 worldwide territories.

In the ongoing international economic crisis, John's global business experience is highly relevant to the municipal business of Beverly Hills. Since his election to the Council in 2009, John has consistently focused on providing the residents with value for our taxpayer dollars. He has worked to avoid situations in which our City is forced into unappealing choices among bad options because no one has done the groundwork to establish a successful framework for negotiations.

While some incremental progress has been made, Beverly Hills is still being sold short. We can do better, and John continues to be committed to improving our negotiating standards and our routine business practices to produce good deals for all of Beverly Hills, from our residents to our businesses. John recognizes the importance of systemic changes within our City government finances and has worked tirelessly to control public employee salaries and benefits, including vocally championing meaningful pension reform. He has served on the League of California Cities' Employee Relations Policy Committee, where he has worked towards creating a pension framework which is fair and sustainable for both public employees and the residents who foot the bill.

John is passionately committed to our schools, having served on the BHUSD's Facility Advisory Committee. He has been the most unwavering voice on the Council in support of the Board of Education's efforts to prevent Metro from tunneling under the High School and he is the only candidate who currently has a child in our schools.