Founders & Mentors

  • Daphne Willis

    Co-Founder & Mentor

    After a record deal with Vanguard Records, a publishing deal with Sony/ATV, multiple master rep deals for licensing and commercial releases with companies like Peer Music and Primary Wav, Willis’ newly inked publishing deal with Position Music is her most exciting yet, aside from developing Academy145.

  • Kyshona Armstrong

    Mentor

    Born in South Carolina and raised in a family of gospel quartet musicians, Kyshona’s musical upbringing was swamped in a myriad of influences from Beethoven to Guns n’ Roses. Today, audiences will often find a common thread of overcoming, hope, and empowerment in her songwriting and storytelling.

  • Voli Martung

    Mentor

    Over the course of the past decade, Voli has produced for a number of major artists (J. Cole, Bebe Rexha, NCT 127, Meek Mill, The Game), landed major synch placements, custom produced for Fortune 500 companies and ad agencies, and worked as lead music strategist at Era of the Engineer (a social enterprise created by legendary mixing engineer and DJ Young Guru).

  • Phillip Brezina

    Co-Founder & Mentor

    Lucky violinist Philip Brezina has performed or recorded with Sting, Death Cab for Cutie, Machinehead, Neal Schon (Journey), Jeff Bridges, Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead), Bob Weir & Phil Lesh (The Grateful Dead), Kanye West, Josh Groban, David Grisman, etc and has learned they all have one thing in common - great songwriting. So he co founded a songwriting camp.

  • Tony Amoyal

    Co-Founder

    While Tony's most impressive musical accomplishment is opening for Vanessa Carlton at a County fair, he makes up for it with tech and business chops. He has walked well over "a thousand miles" in the tech industry as a founder, CTO, consultant, and advisor. Tony focuses on branding, vision, consumer strategy, and technology at 145.

  • Jason Mater

    Mentor

    Jason worked at Paramount Studios and Capitol Records as an engineer before building his own studio in Burbank, CA. He’s worked with artists like Dr. Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Jon Brion. Recent synch placements include Shameless, Max Factor Ad, Star Wars Cantina Disney Theme Parks, High School Music.

  • Colin Willis

    Co-Founder

    A music biz professional who’s been around the block starting as a CBS Records College Rep/Austin in 1978 :) Held Sr. level positions at CBS/Sony Music and Universal Music focusing on biz dev, marketing, artist dev, operations and data/technology. Ground floor stints with successful music based start-ups Next Big Sound (acquired by Pandora) and DigSin/DigMark (acquired by Universal Music).

  • New List Item

    Mentor

    Brennan has been a music producer for most of his life. He’s worked extensively in the pop and alternative world, hailing in both Los Angeles, CA and Nashville, TN. His sync list includes national campaigns for Volkswagen, BMW, Leinenkugels, Ram Trucks, the NHL, Pizza Hut, and Verizon Wireless as well as film/tv shows on Netflix, HBO, the CW, NBC, CBS, and more. His discog includes work with James Bay, Icona Pop, Bre Kennedy, A Thousand Horses, Joy Williams, and USS.