DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER AND
TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION LEADER
I direct, produce, and write films—
and serve as Chief Technology & Innovation Officer at an independent registered investment adviser.
I direct, produce, and write films—
and serve as Chief Technology & Innovation Officer at an independent registered investment adviser.
Early on, I realized that my path wouldn't unfold in a straight line.
My best work happens when distinct pursuits run in parallel, each challenging and sharpening the others.
Early on, I realized that my path wouldn't unfold in a straight line.
My best work happens when distinct pursuits run in parallel, each challenging and sharpening the others.
A path that developed in parallel
ATLANTA / BEGINNINGS
I grew up in Atlanta and first stumbled into performing at seventeen, when my 12th-grade English teacher, for reasons that were never clear to me, suggested I audition for a film seeking a male lead for MGM’s The Man in the Moon. Thanks to her persistence, I eventually relented and decided to give it a shot. With zero experience or training as an actor, I showed up at a hotel just off I-85 near downtown Atlanta, where I found hundreds of young guys like me wandering the property, rehearsing lines for invisible cameras. With nothing to lose, I walked into the audition confidently and walked out astonished. During those few minutes, I felt alive in a way that was unfamiliar, raw, and exhilarating. I wanted more. That evening, I got a callback, and as I left what would be my final audition, the casting director said, “Joe, if you love this, don’t ever give it up.” I took her words to mean she saw potential. I didn’t get the part, but something within me clicked firmly into place, giving me direction and a determined focus. Performing offered a form of expression and a way for that expression to be recognized. I was hooked, and it wouldn’t let go.
Later that same year, I had another experience that profoundly influenced my trajectory. My mother’s brother, Clyde Snell, whom I called Uncle Sonny, spent the first 20 years or so of his professional life in two worlds that seemed to have little in common: he worked in the space program during the Apollo era while also racing competitively, at a time when pursuing more than one career path was far less common than it is today.
One afternoon, while he was in town for the holidays, we sat together watching a race on TV. Quietly, almost to himself, he said,
“I could’ve been there.”
I felt a deep yearning, or maybe regret, in his comment. I wasn’t sure, but it confused me—shocked me, even. To my adolescent mind, it seemed completely at odds with all that he’d accomplished. Here was a man whose name literally rests on the Moon. What more could he possibly yearn for?
After years of both success and failure, I’ve come to understand his comment differently: no matter what I accomplish outwardly, if I give up something deeply meaningful to me inwardly, I’m unlikely to feel entirely at peace with that choice, no matter how successful the path I choose may appear to others. Giving up part of myself to satisfy others' expectations, or because another path seems more conventional, carries its own cost.
His example became a steadying reminder to keep feeding the pursuits that matter deeply to me, despite the challenges and extra current required to power parallel pursuits simultaneously.
NEW YORK: TWO PATHS EMERGE
THEATRE & PRODUCTION
A few years later, I moved to New York City to study acting at The Neighborhood Playhouse, continued training for several years with director and teacher Caymichael Patten, and began finding work in NYC’s Off-Off and Off-Broadway theatre scene as both an actor and director.
Early on, I realized that the usual path for aspiring actors—waiting tables or working another temporary job while auditioning—wasn’t going to be the right fit for me. I needed to find something stimulating that challenged me while still giving me the flexibility to stay active in theatre.
In 1998, I co-founded the nonprofit theatre company Legend Productions, where I produced and acted in productions including Rafael Lima’s El Salvador and John Patrick Shanley’s The Big Funk.
TECHNOLOGY REAPPEARS
At the same time, another part of my professional life began to take shape. In my mid-twenties, while pursuing theatre, I began taking computer classes at Manhattan Computer Resources. Technology had interested me since adolescence, when I spent hours experimenting with early computers, coding, dial-up systems, and games, and I felt immediately at home again.
I soon began teaching and later became the school’s Director of Training, writing more than 18 computer and internet courses for an organization serving over 3,500 professionals annually while managing the training staff. My days increasingly revolved around technology, education, communication, and systems; nights and weekends remained devoted to theatre.
By then, I had begun carrying many of the same capabilities between two seemingly different worlds, and what I learned in each sharpened how I worked in the other.
In my late twenties, I expanded my technology work into instructional design. During the Chase and JPMorgan merger, I designed curricula and managed project teams supporting several wholesale divisions of the bank. I became increasingly interested not only in the technology itself, but in how people learn, how complex organizations change, and how systems influence behavior. Over time, my interests increasingly focused on the intersection of organizational change and rapidly advancing technology. I was intrigued by this space where new technologies fundamentally reshape how organizations and people define and evaluate work.
My creative work continued alongside it. I began acting in television, producing theatre, and gradually moving toward the side of creative work that felt most natural to me: producing, directing, and shaping many different elements into a coherent whole. As my responsibilities grew in both worlds, the lessons began traveling more freely between them.
ARRIVING IN LOS ANGELES
My wife, Christina Brocato, and I moved to Los Angeles in 2002. I continued pursuing acting for a time, but my creative interests shifted toward producing and directing, while my professional work expanded into financial services—first through client-facing and business-development roles and later through leadership, organizational development, and strategy.
CREATIVE WORK FINDS A HOME
In 2009, I co-founded Unlikely Hero Productions with my collaborator Cesario Tio around a simple idea: telling real-life stories of courage that inspire more of it in each of us.
In 2014, I began collaborating with Sherri VandenAkker on film development, and the following year Christina and I took full ownership of UHP.
Through UHP, my film work has included Breaking: Los Angeles, My Name Was Bette: The Life and Death of an Alcoholic, Undiscovered LA, and, most recently, Skipping Joy.
STRATEGIC COACHING
In 2018, as my role in financial services leadership evolved, I began working primarily as a strategic coach with high-performing wealth managers and advisory teams. The shift in my day-to-day work was exhilarating and an unusually good fit for the eclectic mix of skills, insights, and diagnostic tools I had developed over the years.
Over the next seven years, I built close working relationships with individuals and teams while moving across nearly every dimension of their businesses—from leadership and collaborative dynamics to organizational structure and succession, positioning and marketing, systems, and technology. The work deepened my interest in what enables organizations to evolve and grounded that interest in the practical realities of helping people and businesses change.
THE PATHS CONVERGE
As UHP gave the creative side of my work a more deliberate home and strategic coaching deepened my understanding of how people and organizations change, technology was becoming equally central to how I approached organizational problems. Digital platforms led me into workflow and automation, which then drew me deeper into data, integration, permissions, governance, and enterprise architecture. What had begun years earlier with technology education gradually evolved into designing and building enterprise systems.
Today, I serve as Chief Technology & Innovation Officer for a large independent registered investment adviser headquartered in Southern California, where my work spans enterprise technology, data, workflow, governance, and the practical implementation of AI inside a regulated organization. The role combines strategic leadership with hands-on architecture and implementation.
My work today
Documentary filmmaking and technology & innovation leadership remain active parts of my professional life.
I also write and speak about technology, leadership, organizational development, disruption, and business strategy. My work has appeared in industry publications including the Journal of Financial Planning, GAMA International Journal, and PowerAdvice, with “Leadership on the Line” receiving GAMA’s 2018 Editor’s Choice Award.
Through it all, I remain most interested in possibility: understanding what is there, seeing what could be, and doing the work required to shape it and bring it into being.