President and CEO, Welle Entertainment

Cathy Schulman

Cathy Schulman, a Best Picture Academy Award® winning producer and veteran film executive, is the president and CEO of Welle Entertainment, a film and television production and finance company that opened its doors in 2017. Under the Welle banner, Schulman has sold six series to studios and networks and three features to studios. Schulman recently wrapped production on two such features: Otherhood for Netflix starring Angela Bassett, Patricia Arquette, and Felicity Huffman, and Five Feet Apart for CBS Films starring Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson. Previously, Schulman the Head of Production for STX Entertainment. Having joined the company as one of its initial senior executives, Schulman managed an annual twelve picture slate.  Recent films under Schulman’s purview include the Summer 2016 hit Bad Moms, written and directed by The Hangover’s Jon Lucas and Scott Moore and starring Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Christina Applegate; and  the critical darling The Edge of Seventeen, written and directed by Kelly Freemon Craig, and starring Woody Harrelson and Hailee Steinfeld, for whom it garnered a Golden Globe nomination.  Under her own Bull’s Eye Entertainment banner, Schulman produced Crash, directed by Paul Haggis and starring Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon and Terrence Howard. In addition to Schulman receiving the film’s Best Picture Oscar in 2006, Crash received Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing. Among many of the notable films Schulman has produced are  Horns, Voices, Bernie, Soul Surfer, Thumbsucker,  and The Illusionist. She also developed and arranged the financing for Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York.

Schulman has been the President of Women In Film, the industry’s leading advocacy organization for women in media, since 2011. Schulman is also a  member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences,  a USC Stark Program producer’s mentor and has taught graduate level film producing at UCLA and the Dodge College of Film Media and Arts at Chapman University, where she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate. She has also served as a judge for the prestigious Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards. She is a notable industry spokesperson and public speaker and most recently gave the 2016 media address for International Woman’s Day at the United Nations. Schulman is a graduate of Yale University, with a double major in Theater Studies and History of Art.  She is the mother of one daughter and resides in Los Angeles, California.