Financial Consultant, President/Founder of Business Strategies

Louise Levison is President of Business Strategies (moviemoney.com), a consulting firm that specializes in writing business plans for film and other entertainment-related companies. She is the author of Filmmakers & Financing: Business Plans for Independents (Fifth Edition, December 2006, Focal Press) and publisher/editor of The Film Entrepreneur: A Newsletter for the Independent Filmmaker and Investors. Levison’s clients have raised money for low-budget films such as The Blair Witch Project, the most profitable independent film in history, and for companies raising as much as $300 million. Other clients’ projects include Toussaint (to be directed by Danny Glover), Crimebusters (in production and starring Ernest Borgnine), The First of May, Michael Winslow Live, Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman, Moving Midway, High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story, Protecting the King, The Open Road, Dinner Rush, Little Chicago and California Dreaming. Among her corporate clients are Danny Glover’s Louverture Films (Trouble the Water, a nominee for the 2008 Best Documentary Academy Award) and his Louverture Film Fund I, Monterrey Pictures Entertainment, WhiteLight Entertainment (Academy Award-winner Gerald Molen), Audience Alliance Motion Picture Studios, The Pamplin Film Company, Tokuma International Ltd (Shall We Dance and Princess Mononoke) and the Ilya Salkind Company. Levison is also an affiliate of the Berlin-based consulting company Peacefulfish (peacefulfish.com).

Levison is an Instructor in the Extension Program at UCLA and has been a Visiting Professor at the Taipei (Taiwan) National University of the Arts and Chapman University (Orange County, CA). She has presented seminars and/or been on panels for Film Independent (FIND), the Sundance Film Festival, Producer’s Guild of America, Galway (Ireland) Film Fleadh, National Association of Broadcasters, Hollywood Black Film Festival, Florida Media Market, American Black Film Festival, National Association Of Latino Independent Producers, Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts, Georgia Film and Video Center, Austin Film Festival, Florida Motion Picture and Television Association, Cincinnati Film Commission, Arizona Film Commission, Independent Cinema Expo, Women in Film, California Lawyers for the Arts, Nashville Film Festival, The Learning Annex (New York and Los Angeles) and others.

Prior to working in the entertainment industry, Levison worked for the Stanford Research Institute, the American Iron and Steel Institute, two for-profit hospital corporations and as a stockbroker. She also co-hosted a call-in radio show (heard on 100 stations in the United States, Canada and Mexico) on the Business Radio Network for three years and is a former stockbroker. She is on the Advisory Board of CineWomen and a member of Film Independent (Los Angeles), Women in Film, the International Documentary Association and the U.S. Internet Industry Association. Her graduate education includes an M.A. in Asian Area Studies from New York University and an M.B.A. in Finance from California State University, Dominguez Hills.