Meet the Team - Coverfly

Our Story

In 2014, Scot Lawrie and Mark Stasenko built a simple software tool that helped manage the coordination of sending scripts and written feedback between writers and professional script readers for their script coverage service WeScreenplay. After a few years, Mark and Scot realized that the software they had been developing would be useful to other organizations. They spun it off into its own service and Coverfly was born.

Soon, dozens of other competitions, labs, fellowship and festivals came onboard, each with their own unique readers, evaluation guidelines, judges, administrators, industry outreach, prizes, and they use Coverfly to make administration faster, more transparent, and more fair.

Fast forward another year, and Coverfly launched its writer-facing dashboard, a technical advancement which allowed writers to securely and transparently access their data on Coverfly’s platform for the first time.

Today, Coverfly has over 50 organizations accepting submissions via Coverfly, and thousands of screenwriters have signed up for their free writer dashboard. Coverfly’s mission is to highlight writers’ competition successes to the entertainment industry, celebrating great storytellers and helping to connect talented emerging writers with script buyers, producers, agents, managers and studio executives.

Meet the Core Four

Scot Lawrie

President / CTO

Software engineer and problem-solving guru, Scot spent years tapping on a piece of plastic in just the right way to create Coverfly. He has a great recipe for fried Okra, but he forgot it.

Thomas Dever

Director of Operations

Fiercely proud Ohio native, Tom Dever is an independent film producer & writer, published author and, if he does say so himself, a damn fine script analyst.

Natasha Guimond

Head of Branding and Design

Tash is an internationally published designer, writer and photographer. When she was 15, she carried the Olympic Torch and learned every single one of George Carlin's seven dirty words.

Jacob Funke

Software Engineer

Jake is a software engineer who loves working with Python and JavaScript. He has built backends for high-traffic fan vote web applications like ABC's Dancing With The Stars and NBC's America's Got Talent. He's also kept the same Tamagotchi alive since 1997.

Advisory Board

Mark Stasenko

Mark co-founded WeScreenplay in 2014, which has provided over 50,000 pages of feedback for writers. After winning two prestigious screenplay contests, he signed with representation and most recently was a writer on Netflix’s American Vandal season 2.

Trevor Kress

Trevor is currently Director, Brand Content & Partnerships at Stage 13, a division of Warner Bros. Entertainment. He has over a decade of experience working in various facets of the entertainment industry, including production & development for leading film and television producers. The last five years, he has worked in branded entertainment, building integrated campaigns for top brands like Microsoft and Walmart, and acting as a brand ambassador throughout the entertainment industry.

John Rhodes

John is the co-founder of ScreenCraft, one of Hollywood’s top screenwriter talent-discovery platforms. He has worked for Open Road Films’ acquisition team, acquiring and releasing such films as ‘The Grey’ starring Liam Neeson. He worked as a creative executive at Media Talent Group for clients including Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman. He got his start in the industry at OddLot Entertainment, helping to develop such films as Academy Award-nominee ‘Rabbit Hole,’ the Cannes award-winning ‘Drive,’ and the sci-fi epic ‘Ender’s Game.’

Ari Lubet

After graduating from film school at the University of Wisconsin in 2007, Ari began his career in the film industry as an assistant to a literary agent at Creative Artists Agency and to Michael Sugar at Anonymous Content. He went on to become a literary manager and producer at 3 Arts Entertainment, where he has been since 2013. Ari represents writers and directors in television and film, as well as novelists and comic book creators. He is currently producing the second season of the Netflix television series AMERICAN VANDAL which received nominations for the 2017 Critics’ Choice and WGA awards.

Patrick Raymond

Patrick is a Creative Executive at Mandalay Pictures. At Mandalay, Patrick gets to do what he loves: find great storytellers to tell undeniable stories. Patrick studied business and film production at the University of Southern California. He worked in the financial services industry for four years before transitioning to entertainment, where he worked as a production assistant in television for four years. Afterwards, he transitioned to Gersh’s production department, where he gained exposure to the literary world, working with writers represented by the agency. Following Gersh, he worked at LD Entertainment for three years where he served asCreative Executive, working with writers, helping shape scripts and acquiring ideas for new projects. At LD he had the opportunity to work for Tate Taylor on a James Brown biopic entitled Get On Up, where he learned the ins and outs of producing big-budget studio films. He has since transitioned to the Creative Executive position at Mandalay Pictures. Patrick was born in Alaska and raised in Seattle prior to moving to LA.

Emily Dell

Emily Dell is an award-winning director & screenwriter. Her work has gained millions of views online and distributed worldwide, for studios and networks such as CryptTV, DreamworksTV, Netflix, Starz, Alibaba, El Rey Network, Showtime and Amazon Prime. Her recent graphic novel VERONA, for Emet Comics, is available on Amazon’s Comixology and bookshelves 2018. She is an ADDY-award winning commercials director for companies such as Marvel Studios, FOX Home Video, Estee Lauder, Pepsi, The Science & Entertainment Exchange, Purina and more. She has taught film and writing for Shanghai Film School, New York Film Academy, Screen Actors Guild, National University and more. She studied film at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the University of California, Berkeley. She is a member of the WGA, Film Fatales and sits on the board of the Alliance of Women Directors (AWD).

Scott Carr

Scott studied film at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, where he also played football and did competitive amateur bodybuilding, and upon graduating with his Bachelor’s degree, he immediately relocated from Canada to Los Angeles in 2004. It took some creative thinking and resourcefulness for Scott to procure employment opportunities in the USA being a Canadian citizen. He eventually got his start inside the coveted walls of Hollywood in the William Morris mailroom in Summer, 2008, where he worked until the merger with Endeavor. He also worked at UTA for 3 years, and spent a year as a development executive at Hollywood Gang Productions at Warner Bros., before starting the literary management company Management SGC where he represents writers and directors in film, television, books, and digital content.