Raised in Ohio and California, Brad Listermann showed entrepreneurial skills early on, becoming a successful business owner at the ripe age of fifteen. After studying at the University of Cincinnati and serving in the US Navy, Brad managed statewide fitness clubs for Scandinavian Health Spas. Soon thereafter, he entered the financial industry as an investment broker at Barron Financial, quickly became a national leader in sales and achieved multiple designations, including the most coveted, Multi-Million Dollar Producer. Brad was successful as a manager, individually or through his consulting efforts in raising over 100 Million dollars for various small companies, which convinced him to start his own financial business.
In 1990, to assist various companies and investors with raising tens of millions of dollars in financing, Brad founded and built one of the world's first online investment banking firms, NetStreet Financial, Inc. Brad also managed The Phoenix Organization which did restructuring and corporate turnarounds in which he restored value to failing companies for the shareholders. His investment banking work helped fund tens of millions to many successful companies like Allcom and StarCom Wireless where he negotiated financing for the company and also managed the multi-million dollar licensing operations for all Asian territories. After many years of success in investment banking and taking various companies public, he managed a successful exit strategy by selling NetStreet and was introduced to international filmmaking and financing. Brad began his new entry into entertainment by successfully assisting several Indian public and international companies with finance consultation. In addition he set up a corporation in Indian to handle co-productions called Dream Team Entertainment. Brad also wrote and produced his first film which allowed him to learn a great deal about independent film finance, distribution and production, which paved the way for his career in entertainment.
Brad studied at The Hollywood Film Institute, previously attended by A-list directors Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, before moving on to produce My Faraway Bride with Executive Producers Duncan Clark (head of Universal Pictures Distribution) and Doug Falconer (head of PME Films). For his feature film debut, Brad was not only praised by industry pundits for delivering such a high budget look (on a nominal budget), and was also awarded the Stella Artois "Best New Filmmaker Award", "Best Producer" and the coveted "Best of Fest" award at the 2006 Palm Springs International Film Festival, among others. My Faraway Bride has sold successfully worldwide as My Bollywood Bride and is now being released by Universal/Vivendi in August 2008 at all major retail outlets.
Brad, then, in 2007, founded and was CEO of a production and distribution company, WorldFlix, Inc; a company that has multiple film, television and Internet-entertainment related projects in various stages of production and distribution.
Brad has been an active Adventure Racer, racing in much multi-sport, long range, team races that build endurance, character and team leading skills. Brad has been honored in the Wall Street Journal as an honorary member of the Small Business National Advisory Council, featured in many notable publications that include Economic Times, Red Herring and Business Week and often called on as key note speaker for many prestigious conferences such as The National Outsourcing Conference.
