John Lawrence Miscione

John Lawrence Miscione passed away unexpectedly on February 14, 2026, at 73. He was born in Brooklyn on July 2, 1952, and attended Catholic grammar schools before enrolling at Regis High School, where he thrived in the Jesuit tradition of scholarship and service — translating The Iliad as a member of the Homeric Academy, volunteering with youth in the South Bronx, and playing (credible but enthusiastic) basketball. A 1974 graduate of Johns Hopkins University, he majored in Developmental Psychology and earned a doctoral fellowship at the University of Virginia, where he completed his master's degree (and often quipped that he was still on leave from his doctoral program).

John pivoted to banking and discovered that finance could be its own form of service: how people build trust, take risks together, and stake their futures on one another. John spent 15 years at National Westminster Bank, rising to Vice President and financing middle market companies, while earning his MBA from NYU Stern School of Business. In the 1980s, he joined Valuemetrics as Managing Director and helped to grow the business until its acquisition by Duff & Phelps, where he continued as Managing Director and then Senior Advisor. In 2015, John founded D'Aubusson Advisors — named for a Paris hotel that he and Kristen loved — through which he served as independent director to, and advisor of, private company boards and executives.

A nationally recognized expert on Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), structures that convert employees into stakeholders who share the wealth of the company they helped to create, John served on the boards of the National Center for Employee Ownership, the ESOP Foundation, and the New York Institute of Credit. For John, business was about the human element: helping people at vulnerable moments toward outcomes that would affect many. Colleagues described him as someone who taught them how to think. He wrote and spoke widely in the field, and was still advising, mentoring, and, characteristically, picking up the phone to help, until the end.

His commitment to service was a core value. John chaired the board of the Center Against Domestic Violence, advised Brooklyn Jesuit Prep — a school offering a "Regis-like" education to underserved young people — and was a passionate supporter of New England Science & Sailing, local libraries, food banks, animal welfare, and conservation efforts, as well as a member of Stonington Harbor Yacht Club.

John and Kristen Earls met in 2011 at the farmers' market in Brooklyn Heights, united by a boundless curiosity about the world and a deep love of family and community — he liked to joke that she had forgotten her glasses that day. In 2016, they purchased a historic home in coastal Noank, CT, a place with rich history and connectivity to the larger world. Here he found a sense of belonging and beauty that mattered deeply to him. He relished lectures at the Noank and Stonington Historical Societies, town dock walks with Linus, breakfasts at Carson's, and mornings at the Shipwright's Daughter, where his coffee was ready on arrival.

Our lives will be less without John's kind and outsized heart, his deep and wide-ranging intellect, offbeat humor, and childlike wonder. John is survived by his partner of 15 years, Kristen Earls, of Noank; his sister, Mabel Miscione Berezin, and her husband John Low-Beer, of Santa Monica and Brooklyn.

A celebration of John's life will be held at 1 p.m., Saturday, May 9, at Noank Baptist Church. Refreshments will follow nearby. Gifts may be made in John's honor to Brooklyn Jesuit Prep, the Groton Animal Foundation, and New England Science & Sailing, causes close to his heart.