Chris Cavell is the founder of StarlightIQ, the operating system for brand-talent partnerships. He is a two-time Emmy Award winner with more than 15 years in entertainment.
Chris spent about a decade at The Ellen DeGeneres Show across the flagship show, its game show, and primetime specials, rising from Talent Assistant to Senior Talent Executive and Producer. He later led talent partnerships at Calm for six years, securing dozens of celebrity brand deals and working on influencer and creator partnerships. He also spent a season with The Jennifer Hudson Show.
He worked in entertainment through the rise of Instagram and social media, and saw brand deals move from a small pool of agency-represented talent to a much wider creator economy. He saw the same gap at every level: the deals changed, but the systems around them did not.
Chris holds an Executive MBA from Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management, where his class voted him the recipient of the Martin S. Geisel Leadership Award. StarlightIQ won the school’s Venture Class competition in December 2025.
Why he reviews this library
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