Qualifications
EXPERIENCE is my main qualification to be your Business Agent.
When I first ran for Business Agent, Georgia’s active film season stretched from only April to October. We rarely had more than 10 projects in Georgia in a single year.
In collaboration with other locals, industry partners, and with the approval of our membership, we hired lobbyists to pursue a film tax credit for Georgia. Local 479’s lobbyist at the time, Demetrius Mazacoufa, was the primary author of the tax incentive language that exists today, and as Business Agent, I directly assisted him in drafting that language.
I know it doesn’t seem like much to celebrate compared to pre-pandemic times (and the post-pandemic boom), but Georgia is STILL hosting more film production than any other state, except California and New York. Right now, we have more active productions working in our jurisdiction than the other southeastern states have seen ALL YEAR.
This would not be the case if not for the GA Film Tax Incentive.
I joined Local 479 in 1991, became an Executive Board Member-at-Large in 1996, and Business Agent in 1999. I continued working in the industry while serving as Business Agent until 2009, when the membership insisted I take on a full-time role at the Local office. So while many members may think I don’t understand “set-world”, I actually have spent more years working on set than I have working in the office.
While I may not get out to do set visits as often as I once did, I can assure you that I know what issues members today are facing. I have fantastic field reps that visit sets each day and report back to me about any and all problems our members are facing. You may not even realize there was a problem on your set, because our field rep team was able to identify and resolve it with production before it even became a crew-wide issue.