New York based postproduction company Assembly has secured Becca Falborn as EP of business development. She will be responsible for developing Assembly’s growing client base in addition to identifying new commercial growth opportunities and services in collaboration with Assembly’s VP of commercial growth, Tara Holmes. Falborn has extensive experience in both audio and visual postproduction, with previous companies including Nice Shoes, Hogarth, and Sound Lounge. Falborn currently works as EP of business development for both Assembly and Santa Monica, Calif.-based audio postproduction company Lime Studios…
Video agency Hayden5 has brought on May Nguyen as the company’s first chief customer officer, working out of its New York City office. Nguyen fuses expertise in growth strategy for technology companies with a background in film and commercial production. She will oversee Hayden5’s sales, marketing and account management across all three locations (Venice, Calif., NYC and Tampa, Fla.) with an eye toward strategic growth. Nguyen has over 15 years of experience working with emerging solutions. She most recently served as head of growth and accounts at Industrial Color where she led partnerships, client success, and account management. Vietnam-born Nguyen followed a passion for film to NYC where she attended NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, earning a BFA in Film and Television Studies. She began her career as a production assistant in broadcast, with roles at Comedy Central and CBS News, as well as work on commercials and EPKs for clients such as Victoria’s Secret, Pepsi and Tommy Hilfiger, and artists including Mariah Carey, the Rolling Stones and Janet Jackson. Stepping into a more strategic career path, she made the transition to sales within the technology space. She landed a gig as sales associate at e-commerce infrastructure solutions provider RichFX where she spent nearly four years across multiple roles, honing in on the intricate go-to-market strategies and careful positioning needed to succeed in the highly competitive technology landscape. She embraced the ability to drive meaningful impact on an organization through an entrepreneurial approach, spending the next decade amassing experience across sales and growth leadership roles for small to mid-level startups including SundaySky, ECommerce Partners, Skipodium and Token. In 2020, she made a fortuitous return to her production roots, taking a role as VP of revenue at visual content creation studio Splashlight where she led the sales, account management and marketing teams to lean into changes spurred by the pandemic, achieving 60% growth in the first year and 84% growth in the second year. Splitting her time between Miami and NYC, Nguyen spends her time exploring the foodie culture of both cities and fostering more equitable opportunities for diverse youth within her community as a board member for Brooklyn Level Up….
LevLane Advertising has promoted Elizabeth Weir to chief marketing officer, and Kevin Dunn to chief client officer. Both are newly created roles for the 40-year-old Philadelphia-based agency. Weir and Dunn have held leadership positions at LevLane for six and four-and-a-half years respectively, and during their tenure have contributed substantially to the cultural and financial growth of the organization. As CMO, Weir, who previously held the title of SVP, content, social media and PR, will lead and oversee agency promotion efforts, refining and elevating the brand and mission both internally and externally, and will lead all marketing operations for LevLane. Meanwhile Dunn previously held the title of SVP, strategy & client engagement in the Life Sciences division. As chief client officer, Dunn will continue to lead the agency’s Life Science clients in addition to consolidating account management processes across all strategic verticals….
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More