Team
Crystal Hayes
CEO & Founder
Crystal Hayes’ passion for investing in humanity goes far beyond a technology platform. As a former Miss Michigan USA and Miss USA semi-finalist, she worked alongside over 50 charities and was formally recognized by the state House of Representatives and State Senate for her leadership and humanitarian efforts.
As a Talent, herself with over 15 years experience in modeling, acting, hosting, and public speaking, she has an experienced the struggle that Talent undergoes when trying to launch a successful career in the entertainment industry. Discovering and mentoring new Talent in the industry became her business and passion ever since.
She developed and designed TalentExchange’s business model to help talent raise the capital needed to launch a successful career; tackling one of the biggest industry problem Talent faces. TalentExchange serves as a Talent Incubator by helping undiscovered Talent from all walks of life who wouldn’t normally get through the red tape of Hollywood and the entertainment industry.
Lucian Cojescu
COO / CTO
Lucian Cojescu is an innovative and profit-driven senior executive with over 20 years of leading global business and technology operations, enabling scalable growth, improving customer experience, and generating millions of dollars in profitable growth in the process.
As the former CIO of PromaxBDA International, global entertainment association with over 10,000 companies and individuals with representation in more than 65 countries on 6 continents, Lucian spearheaded the development of a fully customized and fully automated global Awards platforms. The Awards system is responsible for the submission, transcoding, digitizing and processing of more than 55,000 video assets submitted to 19 awards competitions on 6 continents annually. These award entries submitted by companies such as Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, CNN, FX, Discovery, Showtime, Lionsgate, Fox, Turner, NBC Universal, Warner Bros., NFL, Fox, TNT, Paramount, MTV, Disney, HBO, BBC, RAI, Sky, Eurosport, ProSieben, Sat.1, TF1, etc., are scored and tabulated online in real time, by more than 2,500 judges.
Lucian holds a Presidents and Key Executives (PKE) MBA from the George L. Graziadio School of Business and Management with Pepperdine University, the only MBA program in the world exclusively designed for C-level, senior and business owner executives.
Tim Sehn
Former SVP SnapChat
Tim Sehn, former Senior Vice President of Engineering at Snap, Inc started his career in technology as an intern and eventually became the Director of Amazon within twelve years.
In 2013, Tim joined a startup called Snapchat. Within four years, Tim grew the Snapchat engineering team from 10 to 1050 people and scaled the company from 5M to 180M Daily Active Users. He led the Snap development team from“Stories to Maps and technically integrated all major acquisitions including Bitmoji and Looksery in addition to monetizing the application from Snapchat’s inception. Through his career at Snap, Inc
During his career, Tim pursued innovative multi-cloud infrastructure strategy, negotiating billion dollar infrastructure deals with both Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services and invented Snapchat Geofilters. Tim now serves as the Chief Technology Advisor for TalentExchange, Inc.
Carmella Casinelli
Producer
Carmella Casinelli is Co-Executive Producer of TalentExchange. As a successful screenwriter Casinelli formed Bon Aire Productions and has created and sold over 18 projects including TLC’s WELCOME TO MYRTLE MANOR, Discovery’s HANG MEN and THE INCUBATOR for NBC.
Casinelli serves as the banner for the company’s creative content and specializes in the acquisition of intellectual property concepts in the scripted, unscripted, and feature space. Currently, Bon Aire controls a slate of unscripted concepts that are partnered with production entities such as The Weinstein Company, Electus, and eOne, Tricon, Asylum and Relativity among others.
Casinelli plans to utilize her long-term relationships in technology and the entertainment industry to bring TalentExchange to the big screen from an Interactive Pilot to Network Television. Casinelli adds extreme value to the company both intellectually and strategically.
Joseph Ames
Chief Marketing Advisor
Joseph Ames is currently the Senior Vice President of Entertainment at United Entertainment Group, a Division of United Talent and the Daniel J. Edelman company, the world’s largest PR firm. He is a seasoned entertainment executive with over fifteen years of international strategic development experience including entertainment and pop-culture brand leadership, 8 years of global promotional marketing experience, designing and implementing franchise marketing plans, formulating market strategies on new initiatives, and managing talent.
He has had proven success in marketing, sales, business development, building innovative celebrity partnerships, developing licensing/retail strategies, connecting with consumers, and growing financially-successful business models. Ames has strong ROI-focused leadership, negotiation, sales, retail and strategic brand management experience, with a focus on the worldwide marketplace.
Over the course of his career, Ames has brought in over $750+MM in paid media support secured from Fortune 500 brands, and opening new channels of distribution for over $120MM+ in revenue from retail, packaged goods, B2B and consumer electronics partnerships, and 7 years in brand marketing, launching and building franchises including Harry Potter, in the international marketplace. Joseph serves as the Head of Marketing for TalentExchange, Inc.