Jennifer Lawrence’s ‘Joy’ is personal for ex-Cravath lawyer
By Jennifer Henderson, From The Am Law Daily
When Jennifer Lawrence took home a Golden Globe Sunday night for her performance in the movie “Joy,” former Cravath, Swaine & Moore associate Robert “Bobby” Miranne was especially thrilled by the news.
Miranne says Lawrence “has charisma that can move a room.” But he isn’t just another fan of the international megastar. Lawrence’s title character in the film is none other than Miranne’s mother, Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano. Since 2014, Mangano has also been Miranne’s boss at Home Shopping Network parent HSN Inc., where the former Cravath lawyer now works an executive.
“Joy” chronicles Mangano’s determined journey from struggling single mother to famed product inventor by way of home shopping channel QVC. Mangano first sold her debut product, the Miracle Mop, on QVC in 1992, selling more than 18,000 units in less than an hour. These days her products—including the Miracle Mop, Huggable Hangers, My Little Steamer, as well as luggage, handbags and fragrances—sell in the millions.
Miranne, pictured right, says he initially had no intentions of leaving Big Law to join his mother’s retail empire. As
Twentieth Century Fox’s World Premiere of “Joy”, Arrivals==
Ziegfeld Theatre, 141 West 54th Street, NYC==
December 13, 2015==
Photo: Sylvain Gaboury/PMC==
== (PatrickMcMullan.com via AP Images)
he put it, “I would have stayed at Cravath as long as they would have had me.”
But then Mangano and HSN’s CEO, Mindy Grossman, approached Miranne two years ago about coming onboard—both to help manage the company’s growth and to assist with the upcoming Hollywood film. He says he couldn’t pass up the opportunity, and he’s now executive vice president of Ingenious Designs Business Strategy and Development at HSN, which bought Mangano’s company (known as IDL) in 1999. Mangano is president of the HSN unit.
Miranne says he’s doesn’t primarily advise the company on legal issues, but “that comes in and around edges.”
“My role is to really think about what are the next big steps we can take as a company,” Miranne says. He wears many hats at HSN, including as commercial producer, product inventor and financial modeler—“whatever needs to be done to make the big idea happen,” he says.
It’s an approach, Miranne says, that was instilled in him by his mother.
“She sees problems before other people see them [and] doesn’t take the status quo because that’s what drives her—the consumer,” Miranne says.
Miranne says his mother relied heavily on own lawyer for advice as she built her career, and seeing that helped push him toward the lawyer’s life he ultimately abandoned. He says he remembers thinking, “I want to do that. I want to be the person people can rely on when they are uncertain or have problems they don’t know how to deal with.”
After law school Miranne landed a position as a litigation associate at Cravath, where he stayed for more than five years. On his first day as a summer associate at the firm, he reported to Queens Criminal Court in New York, where partners Darin McAtee and Anthony Ryan were busy trying to free a pro bono client based on evdence that he’d been imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. Miranne went on to represent a string of corporate clients, including Credit Suisse in residential mortgage-backed securities cases brought against the bank.
Even after leaving the firm, Miranne said he maintains relationships with several partners there. He also noted that Cravath represents The Joy Mangano Foundation pro bono. Most recently, The Joy Mangano Foundation partnered with Jersey City-based nonprofit Rising Tide Capital to offer training, support and awareness to budding entrepreneurs.
Miranne spent this past Saturday at Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square, for an event attended by Joy Mangano herself, to launch an increased retail presence for the Joy brand in 4,000 stores nationwide. The next day, members of the Mangano family—including Christie Miranne, who heads up brand management for IDL at HSN, and Jackie Miranne, a TV host who has dabbled in the family business as well—made their way to another event for the retail roll-out at The Container Store on Lexington Avenue.
After the Sunday event, however, Miranne said his family had to scatter quickly—they all made it home just in time to watch the Golden Globes. Leonardo DiCaprio, star of “The Revenant,” a film based on a book written by a former Mayer Brown partner, took home Best Actor. Lawrence won Best Actress for her portrayal of Mangano.
“[Jennifer’s] brilliant, and we’re all lucky to have met her and gotten to know her,” Miranne says. “This has been a pretty incredible experience so far.”
IMAGE: Jennifer Lawrence arrives at the 73rd annual Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 10, 2016, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. Photo: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
