John Gertz is the president and CEO of Zorro Productions, Inc., which he founded in 1977. He has been responsible for four Zorro motion pictures including Zorro, the Gay Blade (1982), The Mask of Zorro (1998), and The Legend of Zorro (2005), the last two starring Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta -Jones. Also under his tenure, five different ZORRO TV series have been produced, as well as about twenty ZORRO stage productions.

Zorro Productions has executed over a thousand license agreements in such diverse areas as book and comic publishing, theme parks, commercial endorsements, apparel, food products, computer games and toys. Zorro Productions does business in many countries around the world through a network of some 35 agencies. In 2005, together with world renowned author, Isabel Allende, ZPI released a novel about the genesis of the ZORRO character. It hit the NY Times bestseller list and has been published in some 30 languages. One twenty-two one hour episodes of a new Spanish language live action TV series, Zorro, the Sword and the Rose, recently aired and a new animated TV series - Zorro, Generation Z - is in production for Fall 2008.

John is currently the chairman of the SETI Institute's Board of Trustees. He is an avid amateur astronomer, past-president of the Berkeley Jewish Community Center Board, and numerous other non-profit boards.

John earned his M.A in psycholophysiology from Haifa University, and his B.A. in comparative mythology and religion at UCLA and Prescott College.