A guest list is a small document with a large opinion. Every name says something about whom an event is for, whose attention matters and what might happen when the lights come up. For a filmmaker, it can be tempting to treat that list as administration. Carla Santiago’s work suggests it belongs much earlier in the conversation, alongside the question of what the film is trying to do.
Santiago founded Stori, a Los Angeles agency whose public description is unusually compact: A point of connection agency
. It works on strategic partnerships and intentional networking for talent and brands. The phrase leaves room for an interesting interpretation of marketing: sometimes the useful work is deciding which people have a reason to meet.
That proposition becomes easier to understand in the context of entertainment. A storyteller needs an audience. A brand wants a relationship with one. Someone has to work out whether their interests fit before the invitation, campaign or collaboration can make sense.
The person choosing the introductions
Santiago’s background helps explain why this particular problem interests her. Her career has included research at C Space and AMR Research, digital marketing at Passenger and EQAL, and entertainment agency work. At Creative Artists Agency, she connected brands with Hollywood and influencer talent for digital campaigns. At United Entertainment Group, her remit included digital rights and partnerships.
Those are useful distinctions. Research asks what people think and want. Partnership work asks what two parties might accomplish together. A career that passes through both offers a way of approaching an audience as people with interests, rather than as a quantity to acquire.
There is an earlier detail worth keeping in view. At an Alumni Society event in Los Angeles in 2016, Santiago described starting a company from her bedroom and using relationships to open doors at CAA. This was an earlier entrepreneurial chapter. It gives the idea of access a practical setting: relationships had already helped move her own working life forward.
Stori applies her experience to talent-and-brand connections. A 2020 professional spotlight described its customers as ranging from Fortune 500 businesses to technology startups. That range suggests a problem that can survive changes in company size. Having a marketing department does not automatically tell you which collaboration is worth pursuing.
A screening starts before the projector
In April 2025, Santiago joined Christie Marchese on Kinema’s Have You Seen My Film? podcast. The subject was film screenings. The episode’s themes included choosing the audience, working with local influencers, understanding connections and following up afterward. Here was a concrete setting for Stori’s otherwise broad language about partnerships.
The useful question is what makes someone a sensible guest. A person may care about the subject, belong to a relevant community or know others who would want to see the film. Those are different reasons to invite someone, and each suggests a different conversation. This is an editorial reading of the approach: the invitation should have an explanation beyond an available email address.
For a filmmaker or marketer, a useful exercise follows. Before writing the promotional copy, write one sentence explaining the relevance of each audience group. Then specify the next action you hope the event makes possible. A discussion, a recommendation and a future collaboration are different outcomes. Planning for one does not guarantee the others.
Local influencers and follow-up both feature in the interview’s outline. Together, they direct attention to what surrounds the screening: who can bring people into the conversation, and how that conversation continues once the room empties. The event has a life on either side of its running time.
Coffee with an obligation attached
Santiago’s separate initiative, CoffeeXChange, provides another concrete expression of her interest in connection. Her public profile describes a peer program for executives of color, with one-to-one or private group conversations among executives and creators in Hollywood. The stated purpose includes support for one another’s projects and personal success.
The distinction between meeting and helping matters here. A conversation can be pleasant and still leave everyone exactly where they started. Putting projects into the description gives the encounter something to organize around. It also makes reciprocity part of the premise: participants are asked to take an interest in someone else’s work.
“A point of connection agency”
Stori’s own description
A public CoffeeXChange collaboration with byte offers a small, specific example. The invitation brought BIPOC entertainment professionals together for an afternoon of community activities and learning about the brand. Registration was advertised as free. That tells us what attendees were asked to pay; it does not describe the cost of producing the gathering.
It is useful to keep this example in its proper place. CoffeeXChange is a separate initiative founded by Santiago. Its event illustrates her community work, while Stori’s business proposition concerns services for talent and brands. The shared interest is in giving people a reason to participate.
The work between a brand and a person
Stori fits within marketing services, close to entertainment partnerships and relationship development. A buyer considering this kind of agency could also consider an entertainment marketing firm, an influencer specialist or an internal partnerships lead. The decision turns on the assignment: finding relevant people, developing a collaboration and sustaining a relationship call for somewhat different kinds of help.
Stori’s stated emphasis is the connection itself. Its business model is agency service work for talent and brands. The practical purchasing question is therefore about the work a proposed engagement covers. A useful brief would name the audience, the purpose of the partnership and who will handle the next conversation.
There is a cost to that attention even before any agency fee: somebody must spend time learning about the other party. Someone must prepare, coordinate and respond. This is an operational implication of the approach, rather than a claim about Stori’s prices. A large contact list does not remove those jobs.
Give the meeting somewhere to go
The limit is built into the proposition. People need a reason to care, and a partnership needs enough mutual interest to survive the introduction. If the proposed collaboration serves only one side, careful audience selection cannot supply the missing benefit. If nobody owns follow-up, an agreeable evening can remain just that.
The copyable lesson is modest. Put the intended relationship into the brief. Explain why these people belong in the same conversation. Decide who will carry it forward. These are editorial takeaways from Santiago’s public work, not a promise of a particular campaign result.
That is what makes Stori an interesting company to consider. It gives commercial attention to an easily overlooked decision: who gets asked. Long before a campaign becomes a report, or an event becomes a photograph, somebody writes down the names.