Jim Lewis Jr

College Friend

“My young son, James Lewis III, is two-and-a-half. He’ll probably be the ‘third’ one of us to go to SMC.”

After high school it was rock and roll, straight and fast, for Jim Lewis Jr. “I played Gazzari’s and all the Hollywood rock clubs. And rock was working fine for me,” he recalls. “But the producers and agents in the business just weren’t ethical people.” Jim had a scholarship to study theater at Pepperdine. “But I really wanted to do something more substantial,” he says. “So I started my general education at SMC.” And matters quickly changed for Jim.

“SMC is where I got turned around,” he says. “I got really focused on some things that were tangible and the whole experience got me firmly planted.” Jim started studying business and says, “The first business course I took really showed me the light. And I always found some real mentors in that school.”

Business became Jim’s focus and he soon entered into partnership in his father’s successful insurance firm. “I enjoy working with my dad who, I guess I should mention, was SMC’s student body president.”

Jim has coupled his business career with a strong devotion to his Christian church. And this has opened other avenues of music to him. “Right now I’m working on an album for the church which will be sold as a fundraiser,” he says. And he credits much of his satisfaction with the direction of his life to his “old school.”

“It’s a great place to find the direction you need,” he says. “I’ve got a wife, two kids, and a home in Pacific Palisades. So you see it can happen. You can go to SMC and it can all work out.”

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