Sarah Cavallaro
CO-FOUNDER /EX. PRODUCER
for Over 20 plus years, sarah built and maintained Emerald films, a prestigious TV Commercial production company that PRODUCED countless high end TV commercials. As President and Executive Producer, she found the needles in the haystack of creative talent. backed by a feature film company, her goal was to build TV directors careers, and she did just that: her Directors won Mobius, Clio, Juno, and Gold/Silver Bessie awards while helping advertisers share their brands. emerald became a part of “The American Dream” landscape from the 80s, through 2006.
More recent years, sarah morphed Emerald into a vehicle for developing and producing positive impact creative projects with Filmmaker/Artist and partner Cosimo Cavallaro. their work is challenging and personally fulfilling, bringing even deeper purpose to her lifelong career of supporting culture shifts with positive impact.
Sarah is an award- winning novelist, Dogs Have Angels Too.
Cosimo Cavallaro
CO-FOUNDER / ARTIST
Cosimo Cavallaro was born in Montreal in 1961. The son of Italian immigrants, he was raised both in Canada and in Italy. A moment that marked young Cosimo’s life was the response his mother gave him when he asked for a toy that the other neighborhood children had. She told him to draw the toy until it became real, and only then could he have it. That idea bit him—that a flat image or amorphous material could become more real than reality—and it became his focus.
Cavallaro attended art school at Dawson College and then at Concordia University, both in Montreal. He had left Dawson when he met Gerald Roach, who became his mentor, and who took him to Nova Scotia to paint with him. After school, Cosimo began working in the art department on movie sets. During this time, he met Director Max Fischer (The Lucky Star), and he soon became Max’s Art Director on several feature films.
In 1984, Cosimo transitioned into a successful career as a Commercial TV Director in Canada, working for Boardwalk Pictures and for Derek Van Lint (Alien) in Toronto. he then worked for Le Verseau and Cinelaund in Montreal. By 1988, he was in demand and directing in Europe and America for various production companies. He soon joined Emerald Films in the states, and set up his own production company—Figaro Films—in Montreal, as his directing career continued to thrive throughout the 90s.
Cavallaro has won directing awards ranging from the Juno Award for Best Music Video (Boomtown—Andrew Cash) to the BESSIE for Best TV Commercial Campaign, to the Gold Cox International Advertising Award, to an award from the Ministry of Communications, and a Governor General’s Award in Canada.
In the midst of all this, in 1995, Cosimo planted his feet in New York and began sculpting with perishables like chocolate, ketchup, and cheese. His art installations quickly attracted mass media coverage—including CNN (Anderson Cooper), CBC, BBC, CBS, CNBC, FOX, NBC (Dateline), and PBS—and also generated buzz in art magazines, educational and religious journals, major national and international newspapers, and pop culture publications.
His sculptures are now exhibited in museums, galleries, and art festivals across the continent and globe, including at Wilhelm-Morgner-Haus in Germany, the Open Air Museum in Vancouver, the DeCordova in Massachusetts, the Lumiere in St. Louis, Real Art Ways in Connecticut, and the Cedarhurst Center in Illinois.
Cavallaro has also written five feature-length screenplays and one TV series that are currently in various stages of development in Canada and the U.S..