William Mundell has had a career spanning the fields of finance, politics, and entertainment.

He is Chairman of WorkToOwn, a non-profit company focused on increasing economic mobility in America by creating a first ever measure of ownership inequality by company, and using that benchmark to progressively motivate more broad-based ownership.

He is also Chairman of Neurosphere Entertainment Inc, a Hollywood film development company with a mission to leverage the soft power of entertainment to make a positive impact on the US-China relationship.

Upcoming projects include “Untitled Dean Lung Project”, a true story about a Chinese manservant in 19th century America, who donated his life’s savings to the founding of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. John Woo is attached to the project.

Past projects include ”Better Angels”, a documentary on US–China relations, directed and narrated by two-time Academy Award winning director Malcolm Clarke, and “Gerrymandering”, a documentary on the widely abused practice of drawing electoral districts to fix elections, directed by Academy Award winner Jeff Reichert.

Previously William Mundell served as Chairman of ZBB Energy Corporation, a New York stock exchange alternative energy company.

He is also the former Chairman and CEO of Vidyah Inc., a company founded out of Knowledge Universe, a joint venture fund of Larry Ellison and Mike Milken.

Prior to that, Mr. Mundell served as President and CEO of Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, founded by Nobel Laureate economist Dr. Lawrence Klein, and as Chairman of Trade, Inc., controlled by Bain Capital and Sutter Hill.

Mr. Mundell was an adjunct professor at UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management and is an honorary professor at Tsinghua University in China. He has authored numerous articles published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times.

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NEUROSPHERE ENTERTAINMENT is a film development company founded by William Andrew Mundell and Ina-Alice Kopp in 2022. The Los Angeles-based company finances the development of projects from ideation to script, with a thematic focus on heartfelt, inspiring stories related to the US and China. Neurosphere’s mission is to build a better understanding between the two countries and encourage learning from each other.

PAST PROJECTS include ”Better Angels”, a documentary on US–China relations, directed and narrated by two-time Academy Award winning director Malcolm Clarke, and ”Gerrymandering”, a documentary on the widely abused practice of drawing electoral districts to fix elections, directed by Academy Award winner Jeff Reichert.

UPCOMING PROJECTS include ”Untitled Dean Lung Project”, a true story about a Chinese manservant in 19th century America, who donated his life’s savings to the founding of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. Filming is expected to start in 2025 and John Woo is attached to direct.  

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Work to Own is a non-profit founded by Bill Mundell to address the systemic lack of economic mobility in America through a first ever Employee Ownership (EO) Index, in effect a “Gini co-efficient” for companies. 

The EO Index enables American companies to take the lead in shaping a market-driven standard for broad-based ownership of equity by their employees. 

Research by Opportunity Insights at Harvard University reveals that 90% of children born in 1940 grew up to earn more than their parents. For children born in 1980, this figure has declined to 50%.  

With America’s wealth concentrated in company equity, the clearest market solution to enhance economic mobility across America is to give American employees the opportunity to earn equity in the companies they work for. 

And yet despite research demonstrating mutual benefits for both shareholders and employees, and elaborate government incentives (especially with ESOPs), broad-based ownership has failed to catch on economy wide.Some blame this on the complexity of the ESOP program, but at bottom this is more likely a market failure driven by a lack of easily accessible information. 

EO INDEX: SHAPING A NEW STANDARD FOR EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP

Currently, there is no financial market standard to benchmark broad-based employee ownership at the company level.

The EO Index solves this problem by empowering the managers of American companies with data-driven insight to determine the optimal balance of employee-owned equity across the pay scale. 

In the first iteration of developing the EO Index, we have designed two baseline measures. These components are based on detailed employee ownership data for 1,000 of America’s largest public companies:

We are collaborating with top market participants to refine these measures and co-create additional components based on more granular data.  

LEVERAGING MARKET FORCES TO SHAPE A WIN-WIN

The EO Index creates a market solution where government policy has failed, enabling managers to create shareholder value while at the same time positioning their companies as change agents in the creation of generational wealth for their employees.

Work to Own is an internal non-profit project of The Giving Back Fund, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Donations are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. | EIN: 04-3367888

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American capitalism has been framed as a battle between labor and capital. William (Bill) Mundell argues that this story is outdated and holding America back. Drawing on groundbreaking AI-supported research, Bill reveals a powerful truth: companies that invest more equity in their employees outperform the market, growing value for shareholders while enabling more Americans to build wealth. 

The most powerful wealth-building asset in America today is company equity. However, it remains concentrated in the hands of a small fraction of the population. As struggling younger generations question capitalism itself, Bill explains that companies can use data to reform the damaged relationship between capital and labor, unlock economic mobility, and rebuild trust in the system. 

The future of prosperity depends on moving employees from the role of spectators to a nation of participants. That begins with giving them a real stake in the value they help create. William Mundell has had a career spanning finance, public policy, and entertainment. He has served as CEO and Chairman of multiple companies and currently leads two mission‑driven organizations: Neurosphere Entertainment and Work to Own, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding economic mobility. 

His film work includes the acclaimed documentary Better Angels and the political feature Gerrymandering, reflecting his long‑standing commitment to civic engagement and cross‑cultural understanding. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

Fixing capitalism with more capitalists | William A. Mundell | TEDxClaremont Graduate University

 William Mundell’s Neurosphere Entertainment has acquired film and TV rights to 

The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America

, historian Mae Ngai‘s work of nonfiction that tells a multigenerational story of trailblazers in the fight for Chinese American civil rights during the Chinese Exclusion era.

Neurosphere is developing the book as a historical drama spanning both feature film and limited series formats. Mundell will produce alongside Joseph Culp, who will pen scripts with Robyn Mundell.

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, (now by Mariner Books/HarperCollins, in paperback by Princeton Press) 

 centers on Joseph and Mary Tape, immigrants who defied systemic racism in 19th century San Francisco to demand equal rights for their children. When their daughter Mamie was denied entry to a local public school in 1884, the Tapes took their case to court — and won. The ruling in Tape v. Hurley affirmed birthright citizenship for children of Chinese immigrants, decades before Plessy v. Ferguson or Brown v. Board of Education would reshape American jurisprudence.

Neurosphere’s take on the material will focus on the Tape family’s legal battle for constitutional birthright citizenship and how the fully assimilated family was essentially on trial for its “American-ness” in a deeply racist period of U.S. history, in the spirit of 

. The project will trace the Tape family’s journey from post-Gold Rush San Francisco and the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, through the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, the Jazz Age, and the pro-Chinese rallies during World War II, examining their legacy within the broader American tapestry.

“I am thrilled that Neurosphere will develop 

 for the screen,” Ngai told Deadline. “It’s an amazing story of one family’s unexpected journey that contended with racism, exclusions, and the personal costs of ambition and striving.”

Said Mundell, “Tape v. Hurley is arguably the most important American civil rights case you’ve never heard of. Long before other communities fought their battles in court, a Chinese American family stood up to the state and changed the law. We believe this story—rooted in resilience, justice, and belonging—will resonate powerfully with contemporary audiences.”

A professor of history and Asian American studies at Columbia University, Ngai one of the nation’s preeminent scholars on immigration and citizenship. She is also the author of the award-winning 

Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America 

(2004), as well as Bancroft Prize-winner 

The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics

 (2021), and is co-editor of Corky Lee’s 

Asian America: Fifty Years of Photographic Justice 

Ngai is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Radcliffe Fellow, and a Kluge Chair at the Library of Congress.  She also has received fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the NY Public Library, and the Russell Sage Foundation, among others. Ngai has written on immigration history and policy for the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and The Nation. Before becoming a historian, she was a labor-union organizer and educator in New York City. She is now writing 

Nation of Immigrants: A Short History of an Idea

, based on the Laurence Stone Lectures at Princeton. 

Neurosphere Entertainment is best known for its U.S.-China diplomacy doc 

, directed by two-time Academy Award winner Malcolm Clarke, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2019 Beijing Film Festival, as well as 

, a documentary on the widely abused practice of drawing electoral districts to fix elections, directed by Oscar winner Jeff Reichert.

The Gotham Group brokered the rights deal on behalf of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

Neurosphere Entertainment Takes Film & TV Rights to Mae Ngai Book ‘The Lucky Ones’ Chronicling Landmark Chinese American Civil Rights Saga

“Hard Boiled” director John Woo is developing a historical drama about Chinese American Dean Lung — the valet of Oakland’s first mayor Horace Walpole Carpentier — whose donation helped found Columbia University’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. The film has the working title “Dean Lung.” 

The university still refers to the letter Lung sent to Columbia president Seth Low in 1901. “I send you here with a deposit check for $12,000 as a contribution to the fund for Chinese learning in your university,” it said. Later, in order to honor him, Carpentier provided additional donations. “I hope I can make it before I retire. I really want to do it,” Woo told Variety at Fantasia Film Festival in Montréal, where he picked up his Career Achievement Award.

“He was this man’s servant and there were conflicts at the beginning, but later, they started to learn from each other. When he retired, he donated all his savings to the university. His picture still hangs on the wall.” 

Woo described the film — whose script is being written, with financing being sought — as “serious drama, but not too serious.” 

“It’s a very human story,” he said, also underlining its universal appeal. 

“These days, there are so many misunderstandings between the people in the West and the people in the East. I think we need to work on it more, work on understanding each other. I want to make a movie that would serve as a bridge between two different cultures. We can be friends – I really believe that.” 

Before that, Woo will stretch his action muscles with Joel Kinnaman starrer “Silent Night,” already hailed as his comeback. 

“It’s a pretty unique film, even though it’s a common story: a son gets killed and a father tries to avenge him. But there is no dialogue – it’s completely visual,” he said. 

“It was very challenging. I had to make sure the audience understands the story and accepts it, and accepts this character’s emotions. I am so lucky to have found an actor like Joel. He delivered a great performance and he was so happy to do it, too. After all, he didn’t have to talk!” 

Always interested in dramatic storylines and high stakes, with his characters looking for redemption or fighting for their honor, Woo partly attributes it to his Christian upbringing. 

“I guess that’s where it comes from. When I was younger, I just loved the church. When I decided to make films, I automatically started to put a lot of Christian imagery in them. Concepts of redemption and love for people, spirituality. I never wanted to lecture about religion. I just wanted people to feel this atmosphere.” 

Still, despite all the drama, humor is always the key, he said, which is something he misses in new action spectacles. 

“It’s all about action, action, action and special effects. They are missing a sense of humor. But it helps, in real life as well,” he said. 

“Humor brings meaning to our relationships. When I was still shooting films in Hong Kong, we always liked to make people laugh.” 

While the instant recognizability of his work might have eventually hurt his international career, he admitted, he grew to appreciate people’s love for some of his famed visual motifs, such as white doves flying around in slow-motion. 

“The funny thing is that sometimes, I didn’t want to use these things in my films. I would go: ‘It’s too much, let’s do something different.’ And then the whole crew would rebel! ‘John, please, put some birds in there somewhere!,’” he said with a laugh. 

“But I am so grateful. After all these years, people still love my movies. I was so amazed, seeing all these people [at Fantasia] who care for me and support me. It’s very encouraging.” 

Some of his stars also continue to reach out, including his “Face/Off” leads. 

“Nic Cage always says nice things about me in public. The truth is, I don’t talk too much with my actors. They are busy, I am busy. And I am not very social! But some keep sending me Christmas cards, they keep celebrating my birthday. Especially John Travolta.” 

“He has been sending me cards every year!” 

John Woo Develops Historical Drama ‘Dean Lung’.

Speaking to Deadline from Fantasia Film Festival (Montreal, July 14-August 3), where he is being honored with a career achievement award, Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo revealed details of his recent return to U.S. filmmaking – feature films Silent Night and Peacock’s reboot of his iconic 1989 action thriller The Killer – as well as an upcoming passion project about the man who helped establish Columbia University’s East Asian Languages & Cultures Department. Woo wrapped Silent Night, produced by Thunder Road and Capstone Studios, in Mexico in May. The film stars Joel Kinnaman as a father on a mission to avenge his young son who was killed in the cross-fire of gang violence. Kid Cudi, Harold Torres and Catalina Sandino Moreno also star. NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock recently announced Woo’s English-language remake of The Killer as part of its first slate of original films.

Fantasia is screening Woo’s 1992 classic Hard Boiled, one of the films that helped blast Hong Kong action cinema into the international stratosphere, as well as Face/Off, starring Nicolas Cage and John Travolta, one of several films he directed in Hollywood after making the transition in the mid-1990s (along with Hard Target, Broken Arrow and Mission: Impossible II). He returned to Asia in the mid-2000s, when mainland China’s fledging film industry was first starting to take off, where he directed two-part historical epics Red Cliff and The Crossing, as well as Japan-set crime thriller Manhunt, which premiered at Venice film festival in 2017.

Q: You seemed to have a lot of projects in development in Asia a few years back. Why decide to return to the U.S. to make a film?

JW: There were a couple of topics I wanted to make in China, but it was difficult to get the finance and I couldn’t find anything else I wanted to do. When I got the script for Silent Night from Thunder Road, I thought it was very unique and just loved it. What attracted me is that the script doesn’t have any dialogue – the whole movie is totally visual, you’re using visual images, sound and music to tell the story – so for me that’s something pretty new. If I’d stayed in China, I would probably still be making the same old things, another war movie or action movie, so even though this film has a pretty small budget and a tight schedule, that was fine with me. I also got to work with a wonderful actor in Joel Kinnaman.

Q: What stage are you at with the remake of The Killer?

JW: We originally tried to hire another director to shoot it, but couldn’t find anyone, so I took on the job. We maybe shouldn’t call this The Killer, because we’re making a very different version, as the lead character [an assassin played by Chow Yun-fat in the original] will be played by a woman. We’re doing the casting now. We were talking to Lupita Nyong’o but she had to pass so we’re looking for somebody else. The story is similar to The Killer, but we can say it’s more of a story about friendship than a love story.

Q: What was the project you were finding difficult in China?

JW: One topic was about the Flying Tigers [a U.S. volunteer group working with the China Air Force in the Second World War], a very big Hollywood-style, big-budget action movie. But it was a complicated film, we’d have to build old Flying Tiger planes and use a lot of VFX, so it was hard to get financed. It would have had a budget equal to Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbour.

Q: Do you keep in touch with the Hong Kong film industry? What do you think about the current state of Hong Kong film?

JW: I haven’t lived in Hong Kong for some years as I’m living in Los Angeles, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about [the Hong Kong and Chinese film industries]. I think they need to make some changes, especially in Hong Kong, as it’s becoming limited creatively. We need to come up with more new stories as we have too many gangster films, and a few smaller lifestyle dramas, so we should think about what changes we can make, because otherwise the market is going to get smaller and smaller. Then of course the big problem is that they need more money – more investment in Hong Kong film, including investment from mainland China.

Q: After such a long break from working in North America, what was it like shooting in the U.S. and Mexico?

JW: People are still the same, I still get the same respect and all the crew worked so well together. I wish I could make all my movies in different countries. I’m on a mission to learn from new people, and learn from some other cultures, and also make a movie in Hollywood that’s like a bridge; to bring in the culture from China and the culture from the West and try to blend them together. There’s a couple of stories I’m working on. One is based on a true story about a Chinese guy, Dean Lung, who worked as a servant in New York in the 1870s, and his relationship with his master. He donated all his savings to Columbia University so they could set up a Chinese language and culture course. Then he convinced his master to also donate. They still have his picture displayed at Columbia and the course still exists. Hopefully, stories like this can increase understanding on both sides. We’ve got the finance, an American-born Chinese businessman is investing, and hired a writer for the film.

Q: How are you finding the audiences at Fantasia?

NEWS

Fixing capitalism with more capitalists | William A. Mundell | TEDxClaremont Graduate University

Neurosphere Entertainment Takes Film & TV Rights to Mae Ngai Book ‘The Lucky Ones’ Chronicling Landmark Chinese American Civil Rights Saga

John Woo Develops Historical Drama ‘Dean Lung’.

John Woo On His Return To U.S. Filmmaking, New Project About Columbia University Donor Dean Lung & Remake Of ‘The Killer’