Amin Jadavji – CREATOR & EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
A kingpin of commerce and irrepressible industrialist, Amin has been a sorcerer of success as owner and head of a North American commercial products manufacturing business that, after more than a decade under his sage stewardship, has become and remains a leader in its field. A native of Toronto, Amin has cast his enterprising eye and ethos to all corners of the globe and continued to push the edges of the entrepreneurial envelope beyond traditional industries, most recently to create, nurture and lead to sustained success a ground-breaking global virtual mobile telecommunications operator (Roam Simple Wireless), which has rapidly risen to accumulate a swathe of Fortune 100 corporations as active clients.
With a fierce faculty for the finer points of funding an enterprise, from sourcing to structuring to spending capital, to brutally blowing through the background noise of balance sheets that might dissuade lesser deal-makers, and locking in on the lucrative lowdown or leaden liabilities of an established or emerging enterprise, Amin has a hunter-killer incisive instinct for revolutionary opportunities, and the alchemical abilities to animate them to achievement.
Allied with a supernatural skill at serial serendipitous encounters with global celebrities, A-Listers and assorted aristocracy (that should be the envy of society pages and paparazzi the world over), Amin plays a principal role in developing, refining and executing the strategy for the global planning, funding, commercialisation and distribution of the full spectrum of CENTERFOLD’s current and and projected activities.
Ryan Pannell – CREATOR, DIRECTOR & EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
As CENTERFOLD’s creative conjuror and centre of gravity Ryan’s path to the project has been both unpredictable and inevitable. His talented trajectory has seen him hustle his way up from simple beginnings in Toronto’s Chinatown (an Inner City Kid if ever there was one) to become head of a roundtable at his own corporate Camelot, with a domain that now stretches from cyberspace to cinema and many points in between.
Each endeavour and achievement along that galloping gradient has had the now common characteristic of Ryan baselining boundaries that he then blasts past with a perpetual passion and inexhaustible energy that should lead many to wonder whether this fellow has in fact fathomed the formula for “cold fusion” and fed himself on that as his only food group!
The allure of, and ability for, early artistic expression found form at a young age in creative writing and independent feature film production followed by a meandering purposeful path into professional photography, television and mainstream movies. Maturing to a multi-talented maestro – through production, cinematography, screen writing and direction – Ryan has over the years been a magpie in pursuit of his mastery of many media forms, accumulating the talents that are now the glittering trinkets that dazzle to distraction those that experience his creative process and polished productions. Ryan’s establishment of the cinematic cauldron where he continued to carry out his creative chemistry – the aptly titled Crucible Pictures (www.cruciblepictures.com) – signaled the next stage of a steady sortie at higher altitude. It was then a maverick manoeuvre – and now a trademark tactic – for Ryan to bank hard, break formation and barrel-roll beneath the radar into the enterprising ether of the Internet. It wasn’t long before Ryan emerged bearing down out of the Sun, jack’d in as a “cypberpunk-capitalist” and founder CEO of the web-based apps and “cloud” architecture pioneer Blue Circle Software. The revolutionary secure cloud file delivery system (Secure-a-File), that emerged as a landmark achievement from that venture, continues to be widely sought by corporations and individuals globally, and is distributed by Global Data In Motion, of which Ryan is also the Chief Architect.
His enthusiasm for corporate conquest though has not assuaged his appetite for artistic expression, creative craft, or indeed unorthodox sporting endeavour. Ryan remains an active President of Production at Crucible Pictures, still selectively accepts commissions of fashion, glamour and lifestyle photography assignments from leading global publications, and relishes the occasional rumble with royal riders on the Polo field when not pressing his prowess as a Kendo combatant and brandishing as a badge of battle the kind of intricately inked forearms that would give even a Yakuza pause to ponder the wisdom of engagement.
In creating CENTERFOLD Ryan has distilled his philosophy and passion behind all these pursuits and accomplishments in a peerless production where he excels in exercising his artist-artisan abilities and tying together the threads of his talents – from technology to television, from cyberspace to cinema - to push forward the frontiers of the format.
As a board director of several other corporations around the world, and as a holder of multiple technology and business method patents, Ryan’s track record for innovation, and his enterprising zeal and “venture vision” are also the foundation and fuel to CENTERFOLD’s aggressive ambition, strategy and production pipeline. He is no mere artist-auteur, enamoured with the medium and method for its own sake, and as such brings an apex predator instinct to the pursuit of commercial and creative success for the CENTERFOLD production house and all of its commercial partners.
In this guise Ryan is truly a “Ronin of Reality TV”, pushing the paradigm and elevating the CENTERFOLD show above the predictable and past-generation pack.
Gurjinder Bassi (‘GB’) – EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
An alumnus of the prestigious University College London, and of leading global law firm Clifford Chance, Gurjinder’s role as Executive Producer, among the talented trinity that helms CENTERFOLD, is raised on the foundation of a successful, high-profile legal career at the cutting edge of high finance and esoteric financial engineering. With over 15 years of commercial legal practice, ranging from the ‘bull’ pens and ‘bear’ pits of the trading floors of investment banking goliaths (Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan) to brain-storming and broking with board directors of ‘Blue Chip’ multinationals, GB’s experiences and successes on the global front lines of financial and commercial innovation are well suited to the pioneering, paradigm-shifting production philosophy and creations of CENTERFOLD.
British-Punjabi by birth and a native of London’s eclectic, enterprising ‘East End’, GB is much more than the ‘Cockney Capitalist’ who could be the poster-boy for Guy Ritchie’s ‘geezer gangstas’. A cosmopolitan cultural and career chameleon GB now has his home of several years in Hong Kong, having lived and worked in NewYork, Mumbai, Seoul and Singapore, refining his astute eye and experience for identifying and commercialising opportunity on a global scale. Being a sometime stealthy scribe of screenplays and short fiction, a past finalist of the renowned British Film Institute competition for emerging film screenwriting talent, and with a longstanding love of original and visionary creative arts, cinema and music, GB’s professional prowess and personal passions have combined and converged with splendid synergy as a senior strategist for the global launch and long-term development and commercialisation of the CENTERFOLD concept, format and brand, and as pan-Asian anchor for the launch, production and distribution of the CENTERFOLD television series. His pastime of “swimming with sharks” will also serve CENTERFOLD very well indeed!