Executives

Harold Lewis, Chief Executive Officer

Harold, a principal and a founder of FILMBANKERS International, is considered one of the most experienced and highly regarded executives in the field of entertainment financing and banking.  His knowledge and abilities in assisting clients to properly evaluate their projects for banking purposes has been a key to his successful career to date.

He brings to the entertainment industry not only film financing expertise but also his banking knowledge dealing in such areas as music, real estate, precious metals, oil and gas, among others, with the ability to convert different pieces of collateral into acceptable monetary instruments for entertainment projects.

Prior to founding FILMBANKERS, Harold served as Vice President and Manager for the Entertainment Banking Group for Union Bank of California’s Beverly Hills Private Banking office.  His responsibilities included leading a team of relationship managers that acted as trusted advisors to actors, directors, producers, writers and entertainment industry executives providing lending, investment and advisory services.

While at Union Bank, Harold and Brenda identified an unfilled demand on the consulting side of the business, and felt that in the financing of independent films there was a way to give filmmakers a more significant ownership stake in their projects.  Sensing that they were on to something huge and very exciting, Harold handed the management reins to Brenda while he left Union Bank to lay the foundation for FILMBANKERS.

Beginning his career at First Interstate Bank, Harold has 32 years of banking and finance experience behind him.  During his tenure at First Interstate he held positions of increasing responsibility culminating in being appointed District Manager and Senior Vice President, responsible for the management of 40 branch locations in Ventura, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties.

Harold served as CFO and General Manager at the former Cybersonics Records (a division of BET) overseeing the business affairs, accounting, human resources and contract management departments.

Academically, he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and is a graduate of the Pacific Coast Banking School at the University of Washington in Seattle.  He is also a graduate of the Anderson Graduate School of Business, Executive Management Program, at UCLA.

Of FILMBANKERS International and its risk-assessment program, Harold says: “The thing people really have to understand is that we’re bankers by trade, by background, so we assess the probability of failure not the probability of success... Bankers are never optimistic or pessimistic by nature.  Bankers are all about risk-assessment.”