John Emshwiller

John is the current Vice President on the boards of both MJCC and PJA. He is an active member of the MJCC, a member of the PDX Business Breakfast Advisory Group, and a member of the Board’s Facilities Committee. Raised in Inglewood, CA, John received his BA at UC Berkeley, where he served as the editor of his college paper, The Daily Californian. Upon graduation, he was hired by The Wall Street Journal. John worked for the WSJ for 40 years as a reporter and editor, working from the San Francisco, Detroit, New York, and Los Angeles offices over the course of his career.

As a reporter, John covered a range of topics, including energy and the environment; the automobile industry; white-collar crime; the criminal-justice system, and the legacy of contamination from the nuclear-weapons program. He won several national journalism awards and was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. John is the author of "Scam Dogs and Mo-Mo Mamas," a book about the rise of the Internet stock-trading world, and co-author of "24 Days," a book about the Enron scandal and the Journal’s role in sparking that company’s collapse and the ensuing federal investigations. While living in Los Angeles, John served on the Board of the Jewish Federation, while President of the Federation’s western region. He also served on the Board of his synagogue, Leo Baeck.