Master of Leadership and Management: Global Creative Industries Faculty Bios
Howard Burkons
Emmy nominated TV Writer-Producer and Filmmaker
Howard Burkons is a screenwriter and producer best known for the feature John Q, the Emmy, Golden Globe nominated and Best Family Film and Christopher Award winning The Ron Clark Story, and the rom-com, Smooch. An early adapter, writer and designer of digital content, he was a consultant for Electronic Arts and instrumental in integrating story into game play and bringing Hollywood pros into the gaming industry. Current projects include: Redd Zone, a true story he is executive producing for Westbrook Studios at Netflix; The Madrigals, a crime drama he cocreated with Diane Weipert, at Atlas Entertainment. He is also a co-producer on the Paramount feature, Yes I Can, based on the 1965 bestseller. As an actor he appeared in features, performed standup, and was an improv comedian, and credits his time as an actor with the entrepreneurially diverse approach that he’s taken to his profession, and longevity of his career. Howard, who has lectured and taught graduate and undergraduate film and TV classes in screenwriting and producing at Loyola Marymount University and The Philadelphia Conservatory for the Arts, is the Program Director for ASU Film Spark’s Film & TV Career Boot Camp, which he created for his alma mater, Arizona State University, to teach students “how to” maximize their chances for success as they transition from the cocoon of academia to gainful employment. A member of the Television Academy and Writers Guild, he is the father of two and grandfather to four, and married to retired Disney Imagineer, 20th Century Fox Executive and Producer, Donna Burkons.
Travis Cloyd
Advanced Entertainment Technologies Expert; Thunderbird Global Futurist & Senior Advisor
Travis Cloyd is the Global Futurist and Senior Fellow at Thunderbird. He is also a successful business executive with a focus on innovation, digital media and the blockchain. He is the CEO of WXR (Worldwide XR) based in Los Angeles and Miami. A partner company to industry leading licensing agency CMG (Celebrity Management Group). He is a member of the PGA (Producers Guild of America) where he is on the new media council. He is a member of the VRARA (Virtual Reality Augmented Reality Association) and ambassador to the GBBC (Global Blockchain Business Council). An award-winning producer and 2018 Visionary of the Year at Cinequest in Silicon Valley. He is a tech entrepreneur who is recognized in the top 250 on the Forbes 2021 Next 1000 Entrepreneurs list. He’s created immersive content for major international studios, iconic brands, legendary actors, global musicians, top athletes and historical figures over the last two decades. Currently, breaking new ground, leading the industry in developing, producing and licensing experiential content. Focused on future technologies around AI, Machine Learning, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, Spatial Computing, Blockchain and Gaming. Ranging from developing 3D digital humans surrounding famous people like Jackie Robinson and James Dean to creating XR experiences with today’s major superstars, like NFL MVP Patrick Mahomes. He sits on many advisory boards, impact committees and spends his free time exploring next level innovation that extends the boundaries of content engagement.
Adam Collis
Filmmaker; ASU Professor of Practice at Thunderbird & Sidney Poitier New American Film School, MLMGCI Program Director
Adam Collis brings both creative and business experience to the teaching he does as a professor at Arizona State University. In his Professor of Practice joint appointment at Thunderbird School of Global Management and Sidney Poitier New American Film School, Collis teaches creative students how to understand business and business students how to understand the creative process. He does this primarily through the program he leads for Thunderbird, the Master of Global Affairs and Management for the Creative Industries (MAGAM:CI), and the classes that he teaches at Poitier such as FMP 411 Welcome to Hollywood. He also teaches Directing for Film & TV. Hired at ASU in Fall of 2009 to help build a young film program, Collis has dedicated himself to providing his students with one of a kind opportunities to learn filmmaking directly from world class filmmakers both from the studio and independent segments of the industry. To this end, he founded the industry relations / professional development program, ASU Film Spark, which has connected ASU students with hundreds of top level Film & TV creatives and executives. Collis also directed the 20th Century Fox feature film, Sunset Strip (2000) starring Simon Baker (The Mentalist) and Oscar-winner Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club). And in 2014, Collis produced and directed Car Dogs, starring Patrick Adams (Suits), George Lopez, Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), and Oscar winner Octavia Spencer (The Help). Collis has several feature and series projects in various stages of development and looks forward to bringing his students and former students onto these productions. Collis has an BA in Religion from Duke University, an MFA from University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, and an MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Sherry Simpson Dean
Emmy Award Winning Producer/Founder/Strategist at the Intersection of Media, Technology and Social Impact; Current Senior Director Engagement and Impact Innovation at ITVS
Sherry Simpson-Dean is an Emmy and Sundance Award Winning Documentary Film Producer/ Professor/ Strategist dedicated to the global expansion of social innovation through media, technology and engagement. Her focus is change through creativity. Simpson-Dean is an executive strategist with a proven track record of results in business development, social innovation, team building/management. She specializes in designing collaborative environments with a DEI centric approach. Simpson-Dean builds local and global partnerships aimed at building thriving communities by unleashing human potential. As a media/social impact producer, professor and entrepreneur, her tools include design thinking, creative development and implementation of engagement campaigns, storytelling and community forums. She operates in collective impact frameworks across sectors, nurturing ecosystems for problem solving, with the goal of driving equitable change. As founder and CEO of Fluent Creative Labs and as Adjunct professor and Dean of intercultural affairs at Occidental College, Simpson-Dean’s work has focused on harnessing the power of creativity to help solve some of the world’s most pressing issues including the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Her recent work as part of the first cohort of the California Symposium at USC Price School for Social Innovation is re-imagining the foster care system that disproportionately affects children of color and impacts over 28,000 children in Los Angeles County.
Thunderbird Professor of Practice Glenn Edens
Beyond the horizon entrepreneur who foresaw and developed many creative technologies considered essential today, including the first all digital audio workstations for motion pictures, television and the recording industry.
With an extensive background as a researcher, entrepreneur, corporate strategist and venture capitalist in telecommunications, entertainment and information technology, Glenn Edens shares his 50 years of innovation experience: He’s been a founder of seven startups including GRiD Systems Corporation — the company that developed the first laptop computer, the first pen based tablet and one of the first personal digital assistants (GRiD laptops flew on most NASA Space Shuttle missions); WaveFrame Corporation — developing the first digital audio workstation (WaveFrame received a Technical Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) and Range Networks — creating low-cost cellular base stations and the OpenBTS software platform, which powers millions of base stations globally. His research career includes the famed Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Senior Vice President & Director of Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Chief Scientist and Chief of Technology Strategy at Hewlett Packard, AT&T Laboratories, Paul Allen’s Interval Research and as a board member of the Georgia Tech College of Computing. Previously he’s held senior positions at Apple Computer, National Semiconductor and NBI. His venture capital experience includes Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures, President of AT&T Strategic Ventures and other major family offices. He also led Sun Microsystems’ Communications, Media and Entertainment Business Unit, served as an advisor to Apple Corps as well as boards of directors including Flow, Excite@Home, F5 Networks, CableLabs, CMGi, Internet Capital Group and as a co-founder and CFO of Zero One: The Art & Technology Network (01sj.org). His consulting clients have included Temasek, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Wildcat Ventures, 3i, Intentional Futures, Kohler, Autodesk, Fira, Skanska, Paramount Pictures, Warner Music, EMI, Wadia Digital, Knight-Ridder, Sony, Philips, Hitachi, Citigroup, First Chicago Bank, Thrivent, Morgan-Stanley, Eurogroup, BCG, British Telecom, US West, Vodafone, Safaricom, CableLabs, TCI:PC Express, Boeing, SNCF and many Government agencies.
Alfredo Fajardo
Themed entertainment & experience design innovator; fmr Disney Imagineer; project manager for leading global artists like Jeff Koons and Elsworth Kelly
Drawing on his wide range of experiences from Walt Disney Imagineering; a start-up animation training school; a contemporary art fabrication house; a Los Angeles-based design firm; and after graduating with an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, Alfredo Fajardo joined an international team to transform a section of desert into Motiongate Dubai theme park part of the expansive Dubai Parks and Resorts in the United Arab Emirates. Post Dubai, he relocated to Madrid, Spain, as the Director of Creative and New Product Development for Parques Reunidos. There, he collaborated with the business development group, and was the point of contact for many IPs and design agencies. He then moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he helped launch Meow Wolf’s Las Vegas interactive art exhibition. Currently, he is a key member of an international team developing an immersive experience based on the global best-seller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. Alfredo holds an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from UCLA Anderson.
Leo Gomez
Cultural whisperer, Latinx culture warrior, Innovator, Storyteller, Cofounder, mitú
Leo Gomez lives in the hyphen and at the intersection of storytelling and impact. He has experience in content strategy, marketing, on demand audio, business development, innovation, and DEI executive consultant. Executive producer, audio junkie and IP builder. Former senior creative producer at Endemol. With post graduate studies at Berklee College of Music (Music Business), Moscow State Institute of International Relations - MGIMO (journalism), Harvard Business School (International Digital Business) & Singularity University in Silicon Valley.
Former Chief Creative and Brand Officer at Mitu (the largest and most influential Latinx online publisher in America). Award-winning executive producer who has been developing on-demand audio strategies for multiple organizations for more than 5 years. Gomez has also developed and advised on cross-cultural and Latinx strategies for organizations like Nike, MLB, PGA tour, NFL, TextNow, Nickelodeon/Noggin and others. He’s worked for Nickelodeon’s Noggin, NPR’s Los Angeles Station, Lion Forge Animation, Macro Studios and more. His role as senior advisor was fundamental in the launch of LAist Studios and in the development, production and distribution of award-winning podcasts such as California Love, Wild, Hollywood The Sequel, Servant of Pod, and the mental health talk show Yeah No, I’m Not Ok in collaboration with the actress, activist and author Diane Guerrero.
Thunderbird Professor of Practice Rebeca Hwang
Experienced global entrepreneur, innovator, speaker and educator
Rebeca Hwang a venture capital investor who has collected experiences as innovator and inventor, founder and entrepreneur, social entrepreneur, educator and ecosystem builder and she is also a Professor of Practice at Thunderbird and the Senior Director for Thunderbird’s new Center for Global Entrepreneurship and Family Business. Rebeca co-founded Kalei Ventures, which invests in early stage tech startups from Latin America. Prior to Kalei, Rebeca was cofounded and Managing Director at Rivet Ventures, which focuses on companies targeting womenled markets. Rebeca is also co-founder of the San Francisco-based startup YouNoodle, which helps companies and governments engage with entrepreneurs for open innovation.. Ms. Hwang has been very active in creating and scaling ecosystems for innovators and entrepreneurs in several countries. Rebeca co-founded Cleantech Open, Startup Malaysia and Startup Nations Summit. She also serves on the Global Board of Kauffman’s GEN, Imagine H2O, TEDx Rio de la Plata Accelerator (the largest TEDx event in the world), and was a member of the WEF’s Global Council on the Future of Migrations, as well as co-lead the Access to Capital committee of the Mexico-U.S. Entrepreneurship and Innovation Council. Rebeca has worked closely on several national startup programs, including initiatives in Malaysia, South Korea, Spain, Iceland, Chile, Peru and Mexico.
Thunderbird Professor Mansour Javidan
Multiple award-winning executive educator and author whose teaching and research interests span the globe
Dr. Mansour Javidan received his MBA and Ph.D. degrees from the Carlson School at the University of Minnesota. He is the Garvin Distinguished Professor and Director of Najafi Global Mindset Institute at Thunderbird School of Global Management at ASU. Dr. Javidan is currently the Project Director and Principal Co-Investigator of GLOBE 2020, the project has received close to $1.5 million in funding and has completed data collection from over 60000 managers and professionals in 142 countries. Mansour’s article on global leadership recently received the Decade’s Best Paper Award (2006- 2016) by the Academy of Management Perspectives. Dr. Javidan was recently recognized as among the top 100 most influential authors in Organization Behavior in the world. The World Bank and the United Nations Development Program have designated Dr. Javidan an expert advisor on Global Leadership. NASA has designated him an expert on managing diversity, and the U.S. Army has designated him a Senior Research Fellow. Dr. Javidan took a four-year sabbatical from his university teachings to work with the CEO of TransCanada PipeLines, a multi-billion-dollar energy company. Dr. Javidan was instrumental in helping the CEO develop new directions and strategies, and facilitate cultural change within the company and its pipeline business. He was directly involved in the acquisition of a $15 billion corporation, at the time the largest such merger in Canada.
Drue Kataoka
Visionary artist & entrepreneur; Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum; Space for Humanity board member
Drue Kataoka is an artist-technologist-activist & CEO of Drue Kataoka Art Studios, the leading global art studio in Silicon Valley serving top collectors in 5 continents & over 30 countries. Influenced by Zen philosophy, technological innovation and scientific breakthrough, Drue’s body of work reflects her vision of the artwork as a living entity redefined in each interaction with a viewer. Her technology art portfolio includes NFTs, VR and mobile platforms. Her time dilation piece UP! was featured in the first zero-gravity art exhibit at the International Space Station. Named a Cultural Leader of the World Economic Forum & a Young Global Leader. Graduate of Stanford University. Recognized by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research & Education Institute with their award for lifetime commitment to social justice. The first visual artist & the first Asian American woman to be named the Clubhouse “icon.” In 2021, Drue raised over $750,000 for social causes ranging from the King Center, #StopAsianHate and India COVID relief. After 9/11/01, she endowed the Drue Kataoka Art Scholarship for Youth. Drue is a graduate of Stanford University, and a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School Global Leadership & Public Policy Program and Yale University’s Foundations for Leadership Program at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. She sits on the board of the Djerassi Residents Artist Program and is an Academy Member for the Varkey Foundation’s $1M Global Teacher’s Prize. She is a board member of Space for Humanity, enabling citizen astronauts to travel to space.
Deborah Kubota
Innovation leader; Global media entertainment entrepreneur & educator
Deborah Kubota works with content + technology developing projects and innovative solutions for universities, studios, independent producers, and small businesses. Her primary focus is on the East West market and content for digital platforms. She helped develop a 4-day Executive Management Program to develop synergies between the Japanese and American media industries for UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. Currently, Kubota is developing a virtual city walk that will take the user on story-driven, self-guided adventures into the city. She is also developing a virtual UNESCO World Heritage Site project with Fred Wang, Chairman of Salon Films HK. As a research associate at Komazawa University’s Media Lab, Kubota worked on a variety of projects, including a social media + e-commerce platform focusing on Harajuku fashion and culture, and a virtual museum project. Kubota helped start up a media fund with investment from one of Japan’s leading IT companies. She has worked in movie, television and new media production for over 30 years and was a consultant to the President of Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan developing a slate of projects for SPEJ’s global production initiative. She was also part of the team that started up a digital production company in Japan along with Larry Kubota and Richard Edlund, a founding member of George Lucas’ ILM.
Larry Kubota
Innovation leader; Global media entertainment entrepreneur & educator
Larry Kubota is an innovative pioneer in the field of arts and media. He created the first master plan and planning system for the National Endowment for the Arts where he was a presidential appointee as Director of the Policy, Planning and Budget Divisions. He was a member of the founding team that created the first multicultural performing arts center in America. An early champion of digital media, Dr. Kubota initiated the start-up of UCLA’s Center for Digital Innovation and directed corporate and government support of UCLA’s multimedia R&D for the Vice Chancellor for Research who had headed research for Bell Labs. In Japan he was a Chaired Visiting Professor at Hitotsubashi University’s Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy. A personal consultant to the President of Sony Picture Entertainment Japan, he also started up a digital production company and a media fund with a Japanese venture capitalist. Dr. Kubota is uniquely skilled in managing the fusion of new media through merging technology, business, and art and the people who work in these divergent fields. In an era of global media convergence, where technology, artistic content, and various business industries, in partnership with universities, form new digital platforms, apps, and content, Dr. Kubota’s background of academia, business, art, and technology enables him to make strategic connections across disciplines and work with diverse types of people.
Camille Landau
Chief Marketing Officer at WireWheel; Entrepreneurial Consultant
Camille Landau specializes in helping startups achieve early milestones that achieve institutional investment. With a stringent and iterative approach, she ensures product, market, and fundraising milestones are mapped and met with urgency and transparency. Landau’s startup experience includes a particular focus on SaaS, mobile, and media businesses. As the CEO or senior strategic advisor, she has been part of over 100 teams’ early success in meeting product milestones, gaining market share, and raising institutional capital for companies. Startups she has joined as an early member or advisor include Eventbrite, Mixbook, Fandor, Mozilla, WireWheel and Docket. Landau applies the same experience to established companies seeking to grow new ventures or seeking to reboot under-performing business lines. Using vigorous market and competitive research, coupled with a clear analysis of an organization’s competitive potential, she plots winnable paths for new products and service lines and leads cross-disciplinary teams to execute with focus. She has made the winning business case for, and launched new lines of business at KB Home, TBWA\Chiat\Day, Informatica, and Levity Entertainment Group. Landau was a Venture Partner with Portugal Ventures (Portugal’s national VC fund, and is currently a VC investor member of How Women Invest. She has an MBA from UCLA, an MFA (Film and Video production) from USC, and undergraduate degrees, with honors, from Harvard and the London School of Economics.
Thunderbird Professor Patrick Lynch
World leading scholar on latest global trends in Marketing, Big Data Analytics, Digital and Data Decision Making, and the Metaverse
Patrick Lynch serves as a Clinical Associate Professor at Thunderbird School of Global Management. He instructs courses in Big Data Analytics in the Global Economy, Leading Digital and Data Decision Making, and the Metaverse and the Global Enterprise. He is a practitioner of strategic disciplines to prepare organizations for the future, with extensive experience in human performance management, operations, supplier relations and creating quality customer experiences. As a Research Fellow at Accenture, he pioneered assessments featured in multiple business books including: Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business, Intimacy and M-Commerce, in DoCoMo— Japan’s Wireless Tsunami, The Ultimate CRM Handbook: Strategies & Concepts for Building Enduring Customer Loyalty & Profitability, Online Consumer Psychology: Understanding and Influencing Consumer Behavior in the Virtual World, and Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever. Dr. Lynch was a senior executive for one of the largest pharmaceutical analytics providers, directing global strategic planning, defining digital product portfolios, and leading operational excellence initiatives. He won the industry’s President’s Award for Business Strategy & Execution and Operational Excellence.
Thunderbird Professor Euvin Naidoo
Distinguished Professor and Harvard Business School veteran
Euvin Naidoo is the Thunderbird School of Management’s Distinguished Professor of Practice for Accounting, Risk and Agility as well as Director of the Thunderbird Case Series. The focus of Prof. Naidoo’s work is on accounting, financial controls, corporate governance, risk management, innovation and agility. Prof. Naidoo pioneered and launched Harvard Business School’s first short intensive program on Agility, focused on how organizations, senior leadership teams and boards can move from a “survive to thrive” mode in an ever-increasing VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) global economic and governance ecosystem. Over the past several decades, he has served as the former Africa wide Partner and Managing Director for both the Boston Consulting Group’s Banking and Public Sector Practices with a focus on financial services, risk and controls. Prior to this Prof. Naidoo played a leadership role at 2 leading banks developing and leading the Board of Directors immersion program on risk appetite, governance and strategy across multiple countries. He focuses on the intersection of accounting, performance delivery, innovation and creativity in unlocking the full potential of individuals, teams and organizations.
Aimee Rivera
Vice President of Motion Picture Production at Skydance
Aimee Rivera began her flourishing industry career as a Creative Executive working as Assistant to acclaimed director, Charles Shyer (PARENT TRAP), and after two years used her networking relationships to get her foot in the door at Village Roadshow Pictures (THE MATRIX), where she simultaneously was the Assistant for the Head of Film and the Head of Marketing. Realizing her career goals would be better served working in development, she left Village to pursue opportunities at a variety of film production companies until it landed her at Amazon Studios, where she became their first Feature Coordinator. Aimee worked at the company during the earliest days of the streaming wars and witnessed the beginnings of the theatrical landscape transition firsthand. While at Amazon, she continued to build relationships and network, which eventually led to a job opportunity as a Studio Executive at Sony Pictures. In a very competitive situation, she successfully landed the job and spent a year a Sony before going after her dream job as a Creative Executive at Skydance Media (MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, JACK REACHER, TERMINATOR) where she now serves as Vice President of Motion Picture Production. A graduate of Emerson College, Aimee has generously supported and acted as an Instructor for the “Networking & The Trades” module for ASU Film Spark’s successful “Film & TV Career Boot Camp.
Thunderbird Professor of Practice David Slocum
Leading global scholar and educator on media culture, business creativity and innovation, organization and leadership of creative businesses, as well as the education and training of creative leaders
A sociologist and historian of media, Dr. Slocum’s research and teaching have focused broadly on the leadership, organization, and transformation of film, media and communication industries. He speaks regularly to academic and industry audiences on these topics, and advises and consults with creative businesses globally. His publications, including four books, have examined a range of cultural, historical, and industry issues in media and entertainment. He also has an appointment as Professor of Creative Leadership at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership (Steinbeis University, Germany). His current research and writing projects include a history of creative leadership and a guide to leadership and learning. He is a certified executive coach. Dr. Slocum has served as the Academic Director of RARE with Google, a multi-year DEI partner program at Google, and as the Director of Executive Education at the George Washington University School of Business. Dr. Slocum also spent ten years at New York University, as Associate Dean at the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Science and teaching in the Cinema Studies Department and the Art & Public Policy Program in the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Dr. Slocum was educated at the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and New York University, where he earned a Ph.D. studying sociology and media. He currently resides in Paris.
Michael Stern
Silicon Valley legend; Senior counsel at Cooley’s technology transactions group working with startups and established companies such as Pixar, NeXT, eBay, Adobe and Cisco.
Practiced law in Silicon Valley for 35 years as an associate, partner and senior counsel in two AmLaw 100 firms before retiring in 2018; general counsel of General Magic, one of the Valley’s fabled startups and the subject of the award-winning documentary “General Magic: The Movie” (which he executive produced and helped write); assistant professor of English, Harvey Mudd College and the Claremont Graduate School; reporter for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post; freelance reporter and book reviewer for various magazines and newspapers; on the board of directors of The American Prospect and the Friends of the Dickens Project.
Thunderbird Professor Mary Teagarden
World-renowned thought leader and educator in the areas of global strategic management and strategic human resource management
Mary B. Teagarden is professor of global strategy and deputy dean of faculty and administration at Thunderbird School of Global Management and editor-in-chief of Thunderbird International Business Review, and Editor of Journal of International business studies. Teagarden is recognized and sought after in academic, corporate and government sectors for her teaching, executive training and consulting. She is an active international consultant who advises technology intensive manufacturing and service firms in China, India, Mexico, Malaysia, and Brazil. She has published more than 130 articles, books, chapters, and case studies in Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management Journal, California Management Review, MIT Sloan Review and Organizational Dynamics among others. Her research focuses on global competitiveness and capability building with an emphasis on offshore manufacturing and service, innovation, high technology transfer, sustainable development, developing global mindset, and talent management. Teagarden works with a variety of clients including AMEX, AT&T, Cisco, Ford, General Motors, Huawei, Intel, Lenovo, LG Group, Sony, SK Group, among others. Top media outlets call on her expertise regularly. She previously served as a director to the American University of Rome board, as an advisor to China’s Huawei, and the US Airways Educational Foundation, and as a director of the West Valley Child Crisis Center and Arhaus University. Teagarden currently serves on the Board of the China-US Business Research Center at the University of San Francisco.
Tony Vassiliadis
Entertainment industry innovator & current COO of Mar Vista Entertainment, a Fox Entertainment Company
As Chief Operating Officer (COO) for MarVista Entertainment, Tony Vassiliadis oversees key areas of the company’s business strategy, ranging from co-production and distribution to corporate partnerships and deal-making, and overseeing initiatives that improve the company’s operations and profitability. He has negotiated several co-production slates, ranging from partnerships with independent filmmakers to output deals with major studios. He also has fostered agency relationships to identify emerging filmmakers and talent to fuel MarVista’s significant independent film pipeline and helped negotiate several deals related to building out MarVIsta’s music strategy, ranging from an in-house music library to global music partnerships. Tasked with developing more efficient processes across all business groups, Tony has completed Vista Equity Partners’ exclusive High Potential Leadership Program and implemented best practices from across the entertainment and technology sectors to build an efficient and scalable content creation platform at MarVista. Tony earned his undergraduate degree in International Management from Carnegie Mellon University-Tepper School of Business and an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.
