Invite Phil to speak

Short bio

For forty years, Phil Bubar held the keys to other people's front doors — a property manager, a public relations professional, a two-term Rotary Club president, and the man who once answered to the title of mayor of Venice. He is the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, a husband, a father, and a storyteller whose book, Finding My Voice: The New Metric, is part memoir, part manifesto. His message is simple: a meaningful life is not measured by titles. It is measured by how you light up the people around you.

Long bio

Phil Bubar is a Los Angeles-born son of Russian Jewish immigrants, a community leader, a storyteller, and a devoted husband and father. As a child he wore prism glasses for crossed eyes, was among the smallest in every class photograph, and still consistently found himself standing at the front of the room — a sixth grader elected by his peers to deliver the valedictory speech, a teenager who renamed his school's Christmas pageant the Winter Program because it excluded him, and a camp counselor who arrived at the governing truth of his life: you never know when you are going to touch a person's life. For forty years he managed other people's buildings while serving his community — two terms as Rotary Club president, and a stint as the self-proclaimed mayor of Venice. At the center of everything is his family: Brenda, whom he married in 1988 after Grandma Rose insisted he not let her go, and their children Alana and Josh. Alana was born with Tetralogy of Fallot, survived open-heart surgery as an infant, and grew into a woman who works at the very center that once served her. Phil's conviction, lived across seven decades: a meaningful life is defined not by titles, achievements, or accumulated credentials, but by the degree to which you light up the people around you — by living, as he came to understand it, as a contribution.

What Phil speaks about

• Finding your voice by learning to listen
• Identity and belonging
• Family and becoming more fully yourself
• Contribution over titles
• Listening as leadership

His book

Finding My Voice: The New Metric — a memoir about finding your voice by learning to listen.