Angel Funding

Neal Harmon has served as Chief Executive Officer since he helped co-found Angel Studios in 2012. Neal worked for Orabrush, Inc. from 2009 to 2013, a company he co-founded, where he served in such capacities as Chief Operating Officer and as a member of the board. He's a co-founder of the Harmon Brothers advertising agency, which has helped clients drive over $350 million in sales with over 1.3 billion views. Neal received his master’s degree from Brigham Young University in Instructional Psychology and Technology in 2002, and his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University in American Studies in 2001.

Jeffrey Harmon is a co-founder and Chief Content Officer of the company. He co-founded Orabrush, Inc. in 2009 and served as its CEO from 2009-2010. He continued to serve as Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Founder of Orabrush from 2010 to 2013. He's a co-founder of the Harmon Brothers advertising agency, which has helped clients drive over $350 million in sales with over 1.3 billion views. He currently advises other startup companies and concepts. He attended Brigham Young University from 2006 to 2008 where he studied business marketing, traditional marketing, internet marketing, and business administration.

Liz Ellis is our Chief Operations Officer. With her finger on Angel Studios’ pulse, she’s the ultimate people person, and works to ensure a positive work/life balance for everyone. From 2009 to 2015, before moving to Angel Studios, Liz was the Director of Operations at Orabrush, Inc., where she oversaw personnel and managed large operational tasks. Liz is also a sought-after executive coach, workshop facilitator, ICF Professional Certified Coach, and a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach.

Liz is the heart of Angel Studios and has instilled a culture that brings out the best in our employees. Her executive-level personal coaching to every team member inspires their best talents and helps them solve challenges, both personally and professionally. Through her tireless empathy, Liz keeps the heartbeat strong at Angel Studios.

Abinash Tripathy serves as Chief Product Officer. In this role, Abinash oversees the Product and Technology teams to ensure millions of customers are delighted with innovative, simple, and truly engaging experiences every day through stories that amplify light throughout our society.

Prior to that, Abinash served as the Founder and CEO of Helpshift, Inc. where he was responsible for creating the world's first mobile-first Customer Service CRM technology that is deployed on over 2B+ mobile devices. He currently is the Chairman of the board of Helpshift, Inc. In his past career, he occupied the position of Managing Director of Zimbra APAC (a Yahoo! company), Managing Director of Openwave Systems Inc., and Product Technologist at Oracle Corporation. Abinash also holds a master’s degree in Computer Science from American University.

As the Chief Financial Officer, Patrick Reilly oversees the accounting, financial planning, analysis, treasury, and audit functions at Angel Studios. Someone has to. Patrick is a seasoned veteran of tech startups. Prior to Angel, he was Financial Controller at Wingate Web (acquired by Active Network), the VP of Finance at Allegiance, Inc. (now Maritz CX), and the Financial Controller at Moki Mobility, Inc. Patrick has been fundamental in helping create and refine processes in both finance and accounting that allow for quick and reliable data analysis and decisions based on real accurate information. He has all the financial savvy of Wall Street with none of the felonies.

Since October 2020, Brad Pelo is the company's Chief Distribution Officer, and is responsible for distributing creators projects globally after they successfully fund and produce their show. Mr Pelo is a serial entrepreneur, most recently of New York City based SAY. Previously he founded i.TV, the pioneering leader of social television that powered solutions for Nintendo, DIRECTV, AOL, Telus and others. He was the co-founder and President of Folio Corp. (acquired by Lexis-Nexis), Ancestry.com (the world leader in family history research) and NextPage, Inc. (ProofPoint). He is the co-founder of Leader.org, a charitable foundation that provides grants each year to public schools to encourage the modeling of leadership in the classroom. He also served as an outside director for the Tokyo based D&M holdings, a consumer electronics company with brands Denon, Marantz, Boston Acoustics and McIntosh.

Ajay Madhok is the Vice President of Product Strategy. Ajay is a growth architect who has experienced innovation from both sides- helping grown-ups innovate and building startups to disrupt them. Ajay's expertise is in translating good ideas into new products and growth vehicles. He runs ReBoot, a Venture Studio that builds startups, advises venture funds, and consults large corporations to amplify their innovation efforts. He is an advisor to Playground Global and a member of the technology advisory council of Harman, a Samsung company.

Ajay is a distinguished visiting scholar at MediaX, Stanford researching corporate innovation and organizational resilience. The purpose-built startup is one such model that draws on his experience in combining foundational assets of an enterprise with startup talent to create new growth vehicles.

Dalton Wright is a technological optimist who loves his role in venture capital where he gets to meet and support a wide variety of extraordinarily talented entrepreneurs who endeavor to build consequential companies. His expertise is founder support on the early startup journey, including ideation, opportunity identification, product/market fit, business model, team building, fundraising, and GTM strategies. Dalton helped launch the fund to Kickstart and, later, Kickstart’s student-run Campus Founders Fund (CFF). Dalton also assisted in founding Mexico’s first early-stage tech fund. Today, his investment focus centers around data networks, analytics, ML/AI, blockchain, and health IT. His superpower is his openness to new ideas, people and possibilities and wishes he could live far into the future to see what we are building.

Paul Ahlstrom joined as our director in 2014. Paul has served as Managing Director of Alta Ventures Mexico Fund I, LP since 2010. Over his career, Paul has directly participated in more than 125 venture capital investments and previously represented vSpring Capital on the boards of Ancestry.com, which was sold in 2007 to a private equity firm and went public in 2009 (NASDAQ: ACOM), Senforce, which was sold to Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL), and Altiris (NASDAQ: ATRS), which went public and was then sold to Symantec. (NASDAQ: SYMC), GlobalSim and Aeroprise. Paul has also served as an advisor and board to many successful venture-backed startups including Rhomobile sold to Motorola, SpaceMonkey, SendMi, Convert.com, and Jott. Paul is the author of the popular book related to business startups, *Nail It Then Scale It*, and received his B.A. in Communications from Brigham Young University.

Neal Harmon also serves as CEO and Co-Founder of the company.

Stephen Oskoui is an Advisor to Angel Studios. He is managing partner of Gigafund, a venture capital firm backing the world's most ambitious and transformative entrepreneurs. Gigafund makes long-term concentrated investments in founders and CEOs who are capable of growing with their companies and maximizing impact over a period of decades. Gigafund contributed greatly to the growth of SpaceX.

Ricky Ray Butler is a 15 year digital entertainment veteran who has been at the forefront of reimagining the entertainment and advertising landscape in a world of ever growing digital content. He found Plaid Social Labs in 2009 which was later acquired by BEN. Today BEN is leading the way in helping architect the burgeoning creator economy with AI and deep learning. With the recent acquisition of TubeBuddy, BEN is helping the 6M+ influencers and creators on the platform to be more data driven, in addition to connecting brands to the right audiences in non-ad supported media across film, television, streaming, and influencer.

Butler serves as an advisor and investor for entrepreneurs and charities who share his relentless quest for disruption and deep learning, including applications of natural language generation in gaming with AI Dungeon and powering automated machine learning using unstructured data with Zeff (acquired by DataRobot). Additionally, Butler is the co-founder and co-executive producer on the critically acclaimed streaming series, The Chosen. As one of AdAge’s 40 Under 40, and a member of Forbes Agency Council, Butler is serving as the catalyst for the next generation of data driven entertainment and advertising. Like any data driven creative, Ricky spends his free time creating art no one should see and reading about the myriad of ways data has and can continue to improve the 21st century. Ricky Ray lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles.

Derek Andersen is an Advisor to Angel Studios. He is the co-founder/CEO of Bevy, a SaaS product that helps companies like Salesforce, Atlassian, Google, Snowflake, and Adobe build virtual and in-person communities. He also co-founded Startup Grind, a community of 600 chapters in 125 countries educating, inspiring, and connecting startup people. Since 2012 Startup Grind has hosted 10,000 events for more than 500,000 people. In 2010 he co-founded Commonred which was acquired by Income.com. Derek also previously worked as a product manager at Electronic Arts.

Luiz Laffey is the International Language Manager for Angel Studios. Luiz is responsible for all the productions which are searching for a world-wide audience in their own language. Portuguese, Spanish, German, Polish, Hindi, Chinese, Tagalog, whatever language you need, he will provide the best experience to the audience, bringing the highest skilled voices talents to make the original production speak like a native. Luiz is also a Brazilian actor with over 20 years of experience in soap operas, dubbing, voice over, TV commercials, and feature films. As the Brazilian voice for more than 150 different characters, from Inside Out to Star Wars, versatility defines Luiz Laffey.

Nicole is our Chief of Staff. She keeps the entire company running smoothly. Her attention to detail keeps us all organized, on time, and well-fed. Previous to Angel Studios, Nicole was a key player at Orabrush, managing retail logistics for 4400 Walmart locations. Nicole’s ability to see a need and fill it before anyone even asks is uncanny. We would be lost without her hard work and loyalty.

Cordila Jochim is the Director of International Development. Cordila has been a brand builder for companies from Amazon to fintech startup Agio to global movements like LeanIn.Org. As a Movement Builder, she is committed to helping projects, like The Chosen, continue gaining momentum worldwide. She has built partnerships with major institutions, including a partnership with the military to help support women veterans. Along with her skills as a Marketing Executive, Cordila is an author. Her book From the Core: A Spiritual Journey of Losing Everything and Finding Hope was published in 2019. She is a Keynote Speaker giving speeches on hope and inspiration, something she continues to do for the entire Angel Studios team.