Vision Entertainment’s Andres Budnik & Liam Scholey Founded An Agency & Production Company Pushing For Latino Opportunities & Pay Equality
Back in 2012, Liam Scholey and Andres Budnik, assistants at WME and Creative Partners Group respectively, met by chance at Laurel Hardware, a vibey bar-restaurant in West Hollywood.
Scholey, who grew up in Panama, overheard the Chilean Budnik speaking Spanish, and the two got to talking. Scholey was in an agent training program, and he and Budnik discussed the lack of Latino employees and talent at their companies. “I worked for an agent named Eric Rovner,” Scholey says. “He was the Latin agent for the agency.
But there were very few Latin people. And anything that had to do with Latin America or speaking Spanish, people would come to me and ask me.
And that happened at every company that I worked at. It was surprising at such large companies there weren’t a lot of people that could navigate that space or that world.” The men became fast friends, and on a Thanksgiving surf trip together, an idea bloomed. “We really wanted to represent diverse underrepresented voices, in particular Latinos, which is our culture, and the culture we love,” Budnik says. “To put them in front and behind the camera.
