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. Filming is expected to start in 2025 and 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.

Hello world!

Feature 1

Feature 2

Feature 3

Deadline.com

LO01_The Lucky Ones

The Lucky Ones

Variety.com

DL01_John Woo Develops Historical

deadline.com

DL02_John Woo on Return to US

dean lung

forbes.com

BA02_Better Angels aims to change the dynamics

usa.chinadaily.com.cn

BA03_Film offers new hope

jewishjournal.com

BA06_A Better World

chinaplus.cri.cn

BA07_Movie on China-US relations premieres

scmp.com

BA08_Better Angels is to China

xinhuanet.com

BA09_Spotlight: The City of Angels

BA10_‚Better angels‘ still in wings

shine.cn

BA11_BetterAngles aims to correct Sino

thepaper.cn

BA12A_欧元之父次子拍中美纪录片:

en.people.cn

BA13_Mundell looks for better angels

Better Angels

Youtube

GM01_Gerrymandering, Trailer

Gerrymandering

YouTube

AR1_Better Angels Post-Screening Discussion

AR2_NewsChina - Better Angels

ChinaPlus

AR4_Movie on China-US relations premieres in Beijing

AR5_'Better Angels' builds bonds between China and America

Videos

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.

N04_The Lucky Ones

Forbes.com

N01_Making Corporations The Change

N02_John Woo Develops Historical Drama

N03_John Woo On His Return To U.S. Filmmaking

C16_Making Corporations The Change_Forbes.com

Pionline.com

C18_Commentary: Corporations as change agents 

Worktoownproject.org

C18_Regulatory Intelligence

Work to Own

Latimes.com

C20_Competing propositions take aim at California redistricting

C01_Fact and Comment_Forbes.com

Dailynews.com

C21_Calfornia should consider renting out the state’s assets

wsj.com

C02_Trying to Pry the Gerrymander_WSJ.com

kqed.org

C04_Comback in California_kqed.org

latimes.com

C05_3 Former California Governors_latimes.com

C07_With the census nearly complete_Forbes.com

sfgate.com

C10_Prop. 20: Fair redistricting empowers_sfgate.com

ocregister.com

C11_Most voters lose with gerrymandering_ocregister.com

C12_There Is No Perfect Electoral_wsj.com

C13_‚Kooky‘ Monster_wsj.com

C14_California and the Right of Initiative_wsj.com

G05_Mundell Will Not Challenge_latimes.com

G06_Senate Race a Symbol_latimes.com

huffpost.com

G01_In Support of a California_huffpost.com

C22_Bill Mundell: Knowing state balance sheet is key to a prosperous future

California

observer.com

UC02_This China Expert’s New Documentary

sfchronicle.com

UC01_How history can instruct the way_sfchronicle.com

UC02_Trade war could end if China_scmp.com

UC03_China And The Art Of_forbes.com

UC04_U.S. Public Opinion_forbes

UC08_Bill Mundell China should invest_ocregister.com

163.com

UC12_美国ZBB公司主席_163.com

UC020_Restart The TPP With China In Exchange For "U.S. Belt, U.S. Road

US-CHINA

A01_Can Africa Become The Land_forbes.com

AFRICA

AR_SINOVISION NET

AR8_CCTV Bill Mundell

AR6_NBC News Conference Bill Mundell

AR13_Bill Mundell ICPS 2009

AR12_Bill Mundell, 2012 Forum on the Global Economy

AR11_Bill Mundell Tianjin Speech

AR10_23rd Annual Conference - Session III

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

better-angels-post-screening-discussion

P01_Better Angels Post-Screening Discussion

P02_News China - Better Angels

P03_Sinovision NET

P04A_Movie on China-US relations premieres in Beijing

P07_'Better Angels' builds bonds between China and America

P06_NBC News Conference Bill Mundell

P07_CNN - Interviews Bill Mundell

P08_CCTV - Bill Mundell

P09_NBC News Conference - Gerrymandering

P10_23rd Annual Conference - Session III

P11_Bill Mundell Tianjin Speech

bill-mundell-2012-forum-on-the-global-economy

P12_Bill Mundell, 2012 Forum on the Global Economy

P13_ICPS 2009 - Bill Mundell

Home

 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

In an environment where wealth inequality is a political issue, this piece makes the case that the best approach is not more government redistribution programs but rather having companies extending share ownership far more broadly. Author Mundell discuses an original way to encourage more widespread employee stock ownership.

In his last published work, John Steinbeck, that great chronicler of the working class, mused that Americans never embraced socialism because the poor didn't expect to stay poor; they instead viewed themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

Today, the mood is more somber. A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that intergenerational mobility in the U.S. is on average no higher than in Europe. A recent Gallup poll found that Gen Z respondents were almost equally split on whether they view capitalism or socialism more favorably.

Decades ago, Congress made an earnest effort to head this off. With America’s wealth increasingly concentrated in companies, it forged a bipartisan consensus to incentivize companies to extend share ownership more broadly. By rewarding nonexecutive employee performance with company stock—in addition to wages—employees get a pro rata claim on all the future profits the firm earns. Wealth creation through equity ownership is profit sharing both now and in the future.

Imagine, for a moment, that instead of today’s gig workers and their companies being locked into a never-ending transactional dance over their status, that top-rated Uber drivers had the opportunity to earn stock in their company.

Yet despite research demonstrating mutual benefits for corporations, shareholders and employees, and elaborate government incentives (especially with ESOPs), broad-based employee ownership has barely migrated outside of Silicon Valley. Conventional wisdom points to the complexity of the ESOP program, but tinkering with it over time hasn’t helped, and meanwhile the need grows more urgent.

Before reaching for yet another government fix, shouldn’t we first see if a fully informed market can produce a solution on its own? Outside of ESOPs, there isn’t enough public reporting of employee ownership data, even for publicly traded companies. And that means there is no transparent scorecard, no easy way to compare one company to the next and, of critical importance, no way for companies to compete with each other on employee-ownership adoption.

To create that scorecard, we must make currently invisible employee-ownership data visible to all Americans. The tool required is a public-facing Employee Ownership (EO) Index, in effect, a “company Gini coefficient” that measures employee stock ownership within and between companies. The power of such an index shouldn’t be underestimated. In addition to potentially impacting market value, it’s a way for companies to signal their good intentions.

The ESG (which asks stockholders to consider a company's commitment to environment, social and governance issues when making investment decisions) taught us just how sensitive corporations are about their reputations, even with regard to societal problems they aren’t fully equipped to solve. In contrast, broad-based employee ownership is completely within their control and totally consistent with profit maximization. The EO Index offers both companies and the public a flashlight to reveal which companies are leading, which are following and which are impeding change on this defining issue for the future of democratic capitalism in the U.S.

Our nonprofit organization, Work to Own, along with a team from Harvard Business School and other leading institutions, is releasing a first-ever Employee Ownership Index for the S&P 500. Though it will require further refinement because of the data limitations, we believe it will create a new market standard for measuring broad-based ownership that will encourage a race to the top.

The SEC could greatly improve the robustness of the rankings by mandating that companies disclose employee stock compensation by income cohort, but until then, Work to Own will be supplementing our existing measure with surveys of the leading companies to produce a more definitive ranking of the S&P 500.

The more robust the tool, the more empowered companies will be as change agents, and the less demand there will be on government to expand redistributive programs. For while progressively larger rounds of redistribution have improved the living standards of the poorest Americans and strengthened the safety net, they haven’t solved the economic mobility problem and, arguably, have imposed huge costs on the efficient functioning of the market economy.

Rather than continue this course, we must find solutions that expand wealth from the bottom up. Then, and only then can the founding vision of America be restored, and, as Steinbeck described in another essay, can the working class once again be “temporarily embarrassed capitalists.”

—William A. Mundell, Founder and Chairman of Work to Own, and Chairman of Neurosphere Entertainment.

Making Corporations The Change Agents To Jumpstart Economic Mobility

“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’.

NEWS

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

Making Corporations The Change Agents To Jumpstart Economic Mobility

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’