John Y Brown III is of counsel in the firm's Louisville office. He represents a wide variety of clients with overlapping legal and public affairs needs across the high technology, health care, and financial services industries. Brown, a former two-term Kentucky secretary of state and lieutenant gubernatorial candidate, is in charge of Miller Wells' government relations practice group.
John began his career in the private sector by heading up franchising for a fast-food start-up company called Roaster's Inc., helping franchise the business into 37 states and several foreign countries. Later, John was a Vice President at ResCare, a Louisville based human services company with more than 40,000 employees.
His public service started in 1996 when he was elected Kentucky's secretary of state at the age of 32, the second youngest secretary of state in the nation. He was reelected in 2000 without opposition, and served as the Secretary of State until 2004. During his tenure he made good on his promise to "Make Kentucky more business friendly, and government more user friendly" and received national recognition and awards for a number of innovative programs he initiated. In 2007, John ran a competitive primary campaign for lieutenant governor of Kentucky on a ticket with House Speaker Jody Richards.
In 2008, John blended his business and public affairs experiences by launching the JYB3 Group which became Kentucky's fastest growing public affairs consulting firm representing industry leaders such as Cisco, Xerox, EMC Corp, SAP, Deloitte, LexisNexis, El Paso Corp, UnitedHealth Group, Ameresco, and SAS Institute.
John serves on the board of directors for the Healing Place, Louisville Science Center, STAR, and This I Believe and serves on the advisory boards of KYGreenTV and Rooiebee Red Tea. John was also selected by Leadership Louisville as one of Metro Louisville's 128 Connectors and by the Lane Report as one of Kentucky's 43 "Power Elite." He has appeared on numerous state and national TV and radio talk shows offering comentary on politics and public policy.
Brown graduated from Bellarmine University with a B.A (magna cum laude) and an MBA, and received his J.D., with distinction, from the University of Kentucky College of Law.
