Before founding Schwimmer Mediation, Michael spent decades in senior executive leadership roles, including as CEO, President, and Executive Vice President in both small and large companies in the technology, media, and entertainment industries. Throughout his career in the U.S and abroad, Michael negotiated hundreds of deals and resolved numerous conflicts involving an extensive array of subject matter, including investments, partnerships, IP development and licensing, content production and distribution, corporate governance and employment, among many others.

Michael started his legal career in commercial litigation before moving into international law with Baker McKenzie in the São Paulo, Brazil and New York offices. Later, he held in-house legal counsel roles in both high-tech startups and a publicly-traded Fortune 500 company.

This breadth of experience across law and business allows Michael to guide parties involved in a wide variety of complex disputes with a deep understanding of both the legal and real-world business considerations.

Michael received his law degree from the University of San Francisco (J.D.); University of California, Santa Barbara (B.A., Economics and Spanish), magna cum laude; with additional education and training at Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Program; and Straus Institute of Dispute Resolution, Mediating the Litigated Case program, at Pepperdine University. Michael has lived Spain and Brazil, and worked extensively throughout Latin America. He is completely fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, enabling him to deliver the cultural understanding and linguistic capability necessary to effectively mediate disputes involving parties from throughout U.S., Latin America, Spain and Portugal.