He is the founder and executive director of Les Mills International and a co-founder of Pure Advantage, a green business lobby group.

[1][2][3] Multiple members of Phillip Mills' immediate family have represented New Zealand in track and field at the Olympic and Commonwealth Games.

[7] He attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on a track and field scholarship and graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1978.

[8][9] In the early 1980s, Mills developed an exercise-to-music choreographed set of exercises and commercialized them based on licensing instructors to lead classes.

[30] Mills' daughter Diana has also spoken to Forbes about how her parents encouraged feminism in fitness early by promoting "strong is the new skinny".