Phillip Mills is one of the most experienced players in the global fitness industry.
Throughout the 1980s, he transformed fitness for a generation of New Zealanders with the introduction of exercise to music classes and developed the Auckland gym established by his parents into a leading health club chain in New Zealand and Australia.
In 1990, he created Bodypump, a weight-training class that became the world's most popular group workout. Since then, he has built Les Mills International into the world's leading distributor of fitness classes with 100,000 instructors in 22,000 gyms across 120 countries. Millions of people improve their health every day with Les Mills classes, both in gyms and online.
Mills has been a 40-year campaigner for the environment. Together with his wife Dr. Jackie Mills, he wrote Fighting Globesity – A Guide to Personal Health and Global Sustainability (Random House). He founded The 100% Plan in 2008, which in 2011 became Pure Advantage, a charity run by New Zealand business leaders to fight climate change.
Through the Les Mills companies and personally, he and Jackie have provided more than NZ$20 million of support for a wide range of charitable causes and organizations, from environmental and social initiatives to sports groups. They are planting one million trees per year in Africa and have worked with UNICEF to provide water for communities in the poorest parts of the world.
He represented New Zealand in the 110 meter and 400 meter hurdles, reaching the Commonwealth Games finals in 1978 and achieving All-American status while on a sports scholarship at UCLA.
AWARDS
- New Zealand Business Hall of Fame, 2022
- World Fitness & Wellness Summit, Lifetime Achievement, 2020
- NZ Marketing Awards – Marketing Hall of Fame Award 2020
- Kea New Zealand, World Class New Zealander Award, 2009
- Ernst & Young, NZ Entrepreneur of the Year, 2004
Expertise: Transforming consumers' lives through exercise
