Bob Mignogna
Bob Mignogna was born and raised in New York City and began surfing at Rockaway Beach in the summer of 1965. He moved to Long Beach five years later, where he connected with the local surf crew and, in 1973, decided to take time off from work as a teacher to explore his burgeoning passion for surfing. He spent that winter and most of the following year on Hawaii’s North Shore, where he picked up an interest in surf photography and subsequently began scoring shots in magazines around the world, including the California-based Surfing Magazine.
The magazine commissioned Mignogna to shoot the 1974 U.S. Surfing Championship and East Coast Surfing Championship at Cape Hatteras, assignments that got him major coverage in the publication. Surfing then offered him a full-time position selling advertising space. In short order, Mignogna moved up the corporate ladder to become the magazine’s advertising director, business director, and finally, publisher.
Mignogna’s career at Surfing spanned 30 years — the longest running stint of any publisher for an international surf magazine in history. During his tenure with Surfing, the publication grew to rival its chief competitor, Surfer. Mignogna was charged with seeing it through periods of dramatic growth and struggle for the surfing industry, as well as the sport’s transition into a global youth lifestyle movement. And in a twist of fate, the parent company that owned Surfing acquired Surfer’s parent, catapulting Mignogna into the senior management role over the two largest and most respected surf publications in the world.
Mignogna’s influence on surfing went far beyond the publishing world; because of his willingness to take on issues that were key to the structure of the surf business, he was able to use the media and competitive associations to help change the promotion and image of the sport to the public. He helped launch the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association (SIMA) and sat on the boards of several other non-profits, including the Surfrider Foundation, the International Surfing Association (ISA), the National Scholastic Surfing Association (NSSA) and the Eastern Surfing Association (ESA) — all three of which appointed him as a senior advisor. In 2010, he accepted a position with the ISA as Director General of the global non-profit, where he helped produce ISA World Championship events and worked toward the goal of making surfing an Olympic sport — to be realized in 2017 and with the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Mignogna has also tackled beach access and environmental issues. He helped protect San Onofre State Park and Trestles when plans surfaced to construct a toll road and freeway along the banks of San Mateo Creek — a project that would have been devastating to the world famous waves, Upper and Lower Trestles. For his efforts, he received Surfrider’s prestigious 2008 Wavemaker Award. He was the founding president of the San Onofre Parks Foundation in 2008 and led the effort to renew the lease for the park’s 2000+ acres and 6.6 miles of coastline that includes Trestles, a difficult project that took nine years to successfully conclude in 2024.
In 2008, Bob Mignogna was inducted into the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame, and that same year, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Eastern Surf Magazine.
Photos by Hank, Drew Kampion, Larry “Flame” Moore, and Courtesy Bob Mignogna and SIMA
