John Bard Manulis

Manulis, who was recognized by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors as one of their 2012 Leaders To Watch, is a lifelong philanthropist and activist. He serves on the board of directors for The Getty House Foundation, and on the board of the Liberty Hill Foundation. Manulis and his wife, Liz Heller, received the Liberty Hill Founder's Award in 2010.

Manulis is the CEO of Screenspaces, a social technology company he founded with his wife, Liz Heller, in 2011. Screenspace's inaugural product offering was the Vwalls social publishing platform.

In 2008, Manulis produced the campaign events involving local, regional and national surrogates for Barack Obama's Campaign for Change in Colorado. He produced the short filmmaking competitions for Microsoft's Imagine Cup in both Brazil (2004) and Japan (2005), and the Liberty Hill Foundation's annual Upton Sinclair Award dinner (2003, 2004, 2005). With Gary Sinise, he directed the Director's Guild of America's memorial tribute to the life of director John Frankenheimer.

Manulis co-founded Visionbox Media Group, a production, post-production and distribution consulting company using digital technology to produce and distribute films and television content in 2000, before digital technology became ubiquitous in film and television. "Definitions are changing on everything, even what the word 'digital' means", Manulis said in a 2002 interview with the Los Angeles Times. "There are so many technologies that are encompassed in that one word....The one thing everyone agrees on is that 'digital' equals change."

Manulis has also produced several plays, including 1988's Three Ways Home at the Astor Place Theater in New York, and The Umbilical Brothers: THWAK, which was produced in 1999/2000 at Off-Broadway's Minetta Lane Theatre and at the Tiffany Theater in Los Angeles

In 1983, Manulis joined the Nederlander Organization, where he brought projects through development and production as an executive producer in their newly formed television and film division. While at Nederlander, Manulis was involved with producing properties ranging from the ACE Award-winning A Case of Libel, starring Daniel J. Travanti and Ed Asner, to Intimate Strangers, a television movie starring Teri Garr and Stacy Keach. He created the Comedy Zone, a weekly one-hour series on CBS, which brought together writers and actors such as Neil Simon, Kathleen Turner, Wendy Wasserstein, Joe Mantegna, Jules Feiffer and Christopher Durang.

After graduating from Harvard, Manulis moved to New York, where he began his professional career as Marshall W. Mason's assistant at the renowned Circle Repertory Company. Promoted to casting director in 1980, he continued to work with Mason, co-directing John Bishop's The Great Grandson of Jedediah Kohler and assistant directing Lanford Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy, Talley's Folly, Fifth of July and A Tale Told; Hamlet, starring William Hurt, and Murder at the Howard Johnson's, which was produced on Broadway. He directed workshop productions at Circle Rep, Playwrights Horizons, and Manhattan Theatre Club. In addition, Manulis directed Marjorie Appleman's Seduction Duet, which starred Jeff Daniels and won the 1981 Samuel French One-Act Festival.

In 1979, Manulis was chosen by Arthur Penn, Elia Kazan and Joseph Mankiewicz to become a Founding Member of the Actors Studio Playwrights and Directors Unit.

John Bard Manulis (born September 8, 1956) is an American film, television and theater producer, director, entrepreneur and activist. He has produced or executive produced more than 20 films, television programs, and theater productions, including Charlotte Sometimes, The Basketball Diaries, Swing Kids, Arctic Tale, Foxfire, HBO's Blindside, and The Umbilical Brothers: THWAK.