filmmaker
(21)
Tania Luna and the strange business of giving power away
She once sold surprises for a living. After helping build LifeLabs Learning, Tania Luna turned to a harder question: how much more could a team do if its leader stopped holding all the answers?
Ho Jia Jian and the films that refused to disappear
A short film could win a festival audience and then vanish from view. Ho Jia Jian co-founded Viddsee to give Asian stories a longer life - and found himself building a business around the people who watched.
Ira Belsky and the Trouble With a Finished Film
He wanted better music for his videos. A decade after co-founding Artlist, Ira Belsky is still chasing the distance between the film in his head and the one he can actually make.
Sal Lahoud and the price of a second act
A friend needed money to change careers. Sal Lahoud helped turn that awkward request into Pave, then brought another story of unfinished ambition to the screen.
Lukas Colombo and the Art of Getting to the Next Take
A director learns to notice everything that holds up a shoot. Lukas Colombo turned that habit into Kondor Blue, then kept returning to the camera.
Scott Mann and the problem with a perfect performance
A question about Robert De Niro’s cufflinks leads to a larger one: what survives when a film changes language? For the director of Fall and co-founder of Flawless, the answer has become a business.
Hudson Williams Was Ready Before the World Was Watching
Before the breakout role, there were restaurant shifts, acting classes, and a homemade short-film habit. Fame arrived quickly; the craft had been accumulating for years.
Casey Neistat Still Wants to Make the Thing
He built a career by treating the city as a set, the deadline as an editing tool and the audience as a collaborator. Now the platform he helped define feels unfamiliar, so Casey Neistat is returning to his oldest advantage: making unmistakably human work.
Ava McCoy Is Building a Career in Public - One Story, Sideline and Spreadsheet at a Time
The Harvard junior moves between a $13 million student-run business, the Crimson sports desk, ESPN+ sidelines and nonfiction film. Her useful trick is not choosing one lane - it is learning what each lane can teach the others.
Ben Brook
Ben Brook is the co-founder and CEO of Transcend, the data-privacy infrastructure company he started in 2017 with Harvard classmate Mike Farrell. He flew to San Francisco the day after graduation to build software that lets the world's largest companies find, delete, and control personal data at machine speed. Under his lead Transcend has delivered actionable data rights to over a billion people and raised nearly $90M, including a $40M Series B in 2024. A Toronto-born, award-winning filmmaker turned privacy engineer, Brook argues that privacy only works when it is encoded directly into the systems that touch personal data.
Tom Bilyeu
Tom Bilyeu is a serial entrepreneur, media founder, and podcast host who co-founded Quest Nutrition - achieving 57,000% growth in three years before selling for $1 billion - then pivoted to build Impact Theory, a media company generating over 1 billion views through content centered on entrepreneurship, mindset, AI, and geopolitics. A USC-trained filmmaker turned business builder, Bilyeu channels his obsession with human potential into daily content, courses, live events, and a graphic novel series, positioning himself as one of the most prolific voices in the creator-entrepreneur space.
Brandon Li
Brandon Li is a nomadic filmmaker who turned a Sony mirrorless and a one-way ticket into a career. Former MTV 'True Life' producer turned solo travel-doc director, his short films for clients like Nike, BMW and Cathay Pacific have been picked by Vimeo Staff, BBC, National Geographic, TIME and the Smithsonian. He runs Unscripted Studio, an online film school built around the idea that you learn cinema by shipping films, not by watching tutorials.
Binging with Babish
Andrew Rea is the New York filmmaker turned YouTube cook behind Binging with Babish, the channel that recreates dishes from movies and TV. What began as a one-man bit in a Queens apartment is now Babish Culinary Universe: a network of shows, three cookbooks, a branded cookware line, and roughly ten million subscribers who recognize him by his hands and his voice before his face.
Johnny Harris
Johnny Harris is an Emmy-winning American journalist, filmmaker, and YouTuber with over 7.5 million subscribers, known for visually-driven explainer videos on geopolitics, history, and international affairs. A former Vox senior producer and creator of the acclaimed 'Borders' documentary series, Harris left legacy media in 2020 to build an independent journalism operation that now employs 30+ people. In February 2026, he and his wife Iz co-launched Newpress, an algorithm-free creator journalism platform designed to give audiences a direct role in the journalism process.
Mark Fischbach
Mark Edward Fischbach, known worldwide as Markiplier, is an American YouTuber, filmmaker, and actor with over 38 million subscribers and 23 billion views. Starting with horror game Let's Plays in 2012, he has evolved into an independent filmmaker - his self-financed directorial debut Iron Lung (2026) grossed $51 million worldwide and earned a spot in the top 40 highest-grossing independent films of all time. He co-founded the Cloak clothing line, hosts the Distractible podcast, and has raised millions for charity, all while redefining what a content creator can be.
Matt D'Avella
Matt D'Avella is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, YouTuber, and podcaster who turned a $97,000 debt crisis into a Netflix documentary career. Best known for directing Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things and The Minimalists: Less Is Now on Netflix, he now runs one of YouTube's most visually distinct self-improvement channels with over 4 million subscribers, combining cinematic production quality with sharp, skeptical takes on hustle culture, habits, and modern life.
Nathaniel Drew
Nathaniel Drew is an American content creator, polyglot, and filmmaker based in Paris, France, with over 1.79 million YouTube subscribers. Born in Los Angeles to Argentine-immigrant parents and raised in Portland, Oregon, he skipped college to teach himself filmmaking and launched his YouTube channel in 2015. Known for his cinematic vlogs exploring travel, language learning, identity, and existential questions, he speaks five or more languages and went viral with 'Speaking 5+ Languages with my Polyglot Grandma.' He also hosts the 'No Backup Plan' podcast, runs a Substack newsletter, creates music, and teaches filmmaking through his 'Frame by Frame' masterclass course.
Noel Miller
Noel Miller is a Canadian-American comedian, YouTuber, podcaster, rapper, and studio founder who built a media empire from a web development day job. Best known as co-founder of the Tiny Meat Gang (TMG) comedy-rap duo with Cody Ko, Miller now runs TMG Studios solo as its sole owner — a podcast network boasting 300M+ YouTube views and 175M+ audio downloads. With 3.8 million combined YouTube subscribers, a sold-out stand-up career, and a debut comedy special on YouTube, Miller has carved out a lane where internet culture commentary meets genuine artistic ambition.
Peter McKinnon
Peter McKinnon is a Toronto-based photographer, cinematographer, and YouTube creator with nearly 6 million subscribers, known for his cinematic visual style and fast-paced, coffee-fueled tutorials. A former magician and Ellusionist Production Manager turned self-taught filmmaker, he built one of YouTube's most distinctive photography channels from a spare bedroom, won the 2019 Shorty Award for Breakout YouTuber of the Year and the 2020 Streamy Award for Cinematography, and had his landscape photography minted on official Canadian currency by the Royal Canadian Mint. Beyond tutorials, he has launched his own multi-tool for photographers, multiple Lightroom preset packs, a signature coffee blend with James Coffee Co., and the 'Pete's Pirate Life' EDC brand.
Shane Dawson
Shane Dawson (born Shane Lee Yaw) is one of YouTube's original superstar creators, a Long Beach kid who turned a camera and a knack for characters into 4.8 billion combined channel views. Over nearly two decades he pivoted from sketch comedy to celebrity documentary deep-dives, co-authored two New York Times bestselling memoirs, won multiple Streamy Awards, and launched a record-setting makeup collaboration with Jeffree Star. After a high-profile controversy and YouTube demonetization in 2020, he returned in 2021, relocated to a Colorado farm with his husband Ryland Adams, and in 2023 welcomed twin sons. By 2025 he was back with another Jeffree Star docuseries, rebuilding quietly but unmistakably.
Sumaira Mirza
Sumaira Mirza is the Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy Pakistan, one of the country's most decorated advertising creative leaders with over two decades of experience across WPP and Publicis Groupe networks. Known for campaigns that blend cultural sensitivity with bold social impact — including 'Message in a Mithai Box,' which provided legal support to abused women — she has served on juries at Effie Global Best of the Best, Spikes Asia, AdStars, and Dragons of Asia. In 2024, she became only the second Pakistani ever selected for the Effies Global Best of the Best jury. She is also an adjunct faculty member, a regular contributor to Aurora Magazine, and a participant in Ogilvy's elite APAC 30 for 30 Leadership Program.