About Travis

“Be the change that you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Travis Irvine was born and raised in the Columbus, Ohio area, specifically in the City of Bexley, where he attended Bexley City Schools. Because of family and other childhood activities in the area, he also spent a lot of his youth in Pataskala, Delaware, Newark, Gahanna, Reynoldsburg, and Granville. During his time in Bexley City Schools, he was involved in a wide array of activities such as varsity football, the high school newspaper, musical theater productions, and student government, where he was class secretary for two years. He graduated in 2002 with a 4.0 GPA as a valedictorian and then went on to attend Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

During his college years at OU, Travis pursued a degree in communications, working on college television station programs, producing and reporting for the local radio news station (WOUB), writing political columns for local publications, performing stand-up comedy with the college comedy troupe, and producing and directing movies and videos, including the first feature-length movie by an undergraduate student to get a professional, worldwide DVD distribution deal. That movie, “Coons! Night of the Bandits of the Night,” is a horror-satire about killer raccoons that has received critical acclaim around the world since its release in August 2008, and culminated in the creation of Irvine's production company, Overbites Pictures, LLC, based in Columbus. He also had internships in Columbus, Los Angeles, London and New York City during college.

After receiving his B.S. in Communications in 2006 – and graduating Summa Cum Laude and with Honors – Travis went to live and work at an educational field station facility in The Bahamas, which is run by a well-respected, Ohio-based non-profit, International Field Studies (IFS). IFS has given Columbus area high school and university students the chance to study abroad in The Bahamas for over 30 years and provided Travis with the opportunity to teach hundreds of these Americans students about Bahamian history, culture, and politics.

After this stint abroad, he returned home to Bexley to find his neighbors upset with City Hall, coincidently when the longtime mayor was not seeking another term. He decided to run for the office to voice his neighbors’ concerns. He ran against seven other candidates and got sixth place with five percent of the vote, while being endorsed by the Franklin County Libertarian Party. He recently finished a short documentary about this experience called "American Mayor,” which was featured in the 2010 Short Film Corner at the Festival de Cannes and the Atlanta International Documentary Film Festival.

After 2007, he moved to Washington, D.C. for a position on Capitol Hill in the press office of Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), which lasted a few months until he took a job as a traveling video reporter and producer for entrepreneur Matthew Lesko’s website. He traveled to 15 different states covering public services from local governments, and during this time, truly decided that the best governments in America are the local governments.

Since that time, Travis took a job teaching film editing with The New York Film Academy in New York City, which took him all over the country and world -- most recently for a stint teaching film editing in Abuja, Nigeria. He still maintains his residence, his local bank account and his business in Columbus, Ohio, where his family and life is still very much focused.

For more information about Travis, visit his 2007 Mayor Campaign Site: