Joe Lefavi

Joe LeFavi is an award-winning producer, publisher, brand manager, and creative director with over 15 years of experience across all forms of entertainment: Film, TV, Publishing, Gaming, Digital Media, and Consumer Products. Throughout his career, LeFavi has proven himself as a versatile brand builder in genre entertainment, specializing in enfranchising intellectual properties and cultivating their fan communities through strategic licensing and content marketing that prioritize quality and authenticity in equal measure. Boasting a vast network of best-in-class partners, LeFavi has become an expert at extending story worlds across multiple categories and driving business growth by building bridges -- between not only licensors and licensees, but also the brands themselves and the fans that fuel their success. He has led creative and corporate development for disruptive companies like Alcon Entertainment, American Greetings, Archaia, China Mobile Games & Entertainment Group, Comic-Con International, Diamond Distributors, Electronic Arts, eOne, Imangi Studios, The Jim Henson Company, Legendary, Lionsgate, Nerdist, No Mimes Media, Omaze, Psyop, Relativity Media, Sean Daniel Company, SyFy, and Valiant Entertainment, among others. Recipient of the esteemed Rollenspiel Prize and nominee for one Eisner Award, three Harvey Awards, and five ENnie Awards in the last five years alone, LeFavi is particularly proven in publishing and gaming with nearly 200 books, comics, manga, art books, apps, games, and tabletop games on the shelves, including numerous award winners and best sellers. He is responsible for various landmark deals and published works, including Publisher of Alcon's best-selling art book The Art and Soul of Blade Runner 2049, Editor of the award-winning tabletop role-playing game Degenesis, the Agency of Record (2010-2014) for comics publisher Archaia and their merger with Boom! Studios, and Editorial Director and founder of The Jim Henson Company's award-winning publishing division. An authority on fandom and franchise culture, he has been welcomed as a speaker at over 50 industry conferences worldwide and regularly serves as a guest lecturer at academic institutions including USC, UCLA, and UC Irvine. A University of Michigan graduate in Film & TV Studies, LeFavi began his career in physical production and later veered into Film/TV development, serving at Ardustry Entertainment, Sony Pictures, and finally The Jim Henson Company before launching his own media consultancy, Quixotic Transmedia, in 2010. Steering his consultancy into brand management and media production, Quixotic was rebranded as Genuine Entertainment in 2017, specializing in representing entertainment companies, technologies, and intellectual properties as a packager and producer of premium branded content and consumer products. Prior to founding Genuine, he was most recently Head of Marketing for Lionsgate and their OTT network Comic-Con HQ, and Creative Director of Content Strategy and Franchise Management for Psyop, the renowned creative studio that Ad Age dubbed the "Pixar of the Ad World" during his tenure.