On this episode of Bruin to Bruin, senior staffer Tavian Williams sits down with Robert Corzo, a 1988 UCLA alumnus who journeyed from business economics student to chief financial officer of Village Roadshow Entertainment Group. With a career that spans top roles in film companies such as New Regency Productions and Disney, Corzo shares how he went from Silicon Valley roots to becoming a key player in Hollywood’s finance world. Beyond the office, Corzo’s personal life and his deep commitment to diversity and growth – shaped by his time at UCLA – offer perspective for Bruins and aspiring leaders alike. Tune in as Williams and Corzo explore career insights, campus memories and the drive to keep raising the bar, both professionally and personally.

Tavian Williams: Hello, and welcome to Bruin To Bruin. On this show, we sit down with members of the UCLA community to hear their story and advice they have for students. My name is Tavian Williams, and I am a Podcasts contributor for the Daily Bruin.

Today I am interviewing Robert Corzo. Corzo is a member of UCLA’s class of 1988. After graduating as a business economics major, he worked his way up through the finance sector as a senior accountant at Ernst and Young, a senior financial analyst at The Walt Disney Studios before becoming the vice president of finance/CFO of production company Largo Entertainment at the age of 26.

Over the years, Corzo worked as CFO at notable production companies like New Regency Productions, which produced or financed Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women,” “Gone Girl” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Currently, Corzo works as the CFO of Village Roadshow Entertainment Group, which produced or financed films like “Joker” (2019), “Sully,” “Mad Max: Fury Road” and Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby.”

Robert, thank you for joining me, and welcome to the show.

Robert Corzo: Thanks, Tavian.

TW: So working with you, it’s always still so strange to call you Robert because my parents kind of taught me that you’re an adult, you’re older than me. So I always – my mind goes to thinking, call you Mister Corzo. But Robert –

RC: Yes, please.

TW: So you are the CFO of Village Roadshow Entertainment Group. But to get there must have been a long way. And before we get into that, we must know the man behind the title. Behind the title, who is Robert Corzo? Outside of your CFO position, what’s your family life like? What are your hobbies?

RC: So I like to think I lead a varied and hopefully fulfilling life with a variety of things that are influencing me outside of the office. In terms of family, I’ve been with my husband now for 16 years, married for 11 years. We actually met in Sydney, Australia. He’s Brazilian, and we enjoy a lot of things together.

We have a house, we don’t have any kids, never had any kids. We’re one of the DINK couples – double income, no kids couple. We’ve had a dog in the past. She was a big part of our life, probably have another one in the near future.

And, you know, in my spare time, I spend a lot of time on fitness, whether it’s going to the gym, playing tennis, practicing yoga and, in the wintertime, getting as many ski days in as I can get away from the office.

I’ve always been – even before I got in the movie business – I’ve always been a big fan of cinema, probably more so than TV. So I try to see as many movies as I can. Historically, that’s been actually going to the theaters, but more and more so today it’s even watching movies as they come out on the streaming services.

TW: And what would be your favorite movie in current times?

RC: In current times …

TW: Or maybe a favorite movie of all time?

RC: OK, favorite movie of all time is an easier one. It was actually released the year I graduated from UCLA. So it’s the original “Hairspray,” directed by John Waters with Ricki Lake and a big cast. It’s just a movie that, I don’t know, for some reason I connected with. I’ve probably seen it a hundred times. I could quote from it extensively.

And I even had one of those kind of unbelievable, magical moments, living in LA about three, four years after it was released, where I was literally driving down the street one day at a stoplight. I look over and Ricki Lake is driving the car next to me.

TW: Really?

RC: And I literally just spontaneously looked over at her and gave her the Tracy Turnblad wave. And she did it back to me and was laughing. One of those magical moments, living in Hollywood.

TW: But we talked and you said you’re from Silicon Valley, originally.

RC: Yep.

TW: Tell me about your childhood. How do you feel like your upbringing shaped you to become more – well, did you think that you would go into business first off?

RC: So, look, I grew up in what is now the Silicon Valley. I grew up in the town of Saratoga. I wasn’t born there, was born in Massachusetts, but moved. I was very young, and I have no memory of Massachusetts. I went to school in a very well-to-do neighborhood.

I had a very, let’s call it a very fulfilling childhood and high school experience, except for one element, which was diversity. And I didn’t really know at the time, but I mean, growing up in a city where I had a school of – high school of 1,600 kids, and there was like one Black student in the whole population, and there were almost no Latin or South Asian students. It was most – it was almost entirely whites and a few Asians.

I didn’t know at the time, when I came to UCLA how important and influential that would be on my life overall, because I went from this very sort of white bread community to what is the, what I think is the most diverse university in this country. And just within the first week, months, year of living and attending, being part of the community at UCLA, I became so much more appreciative and embracing of everyone around me and gained an incredible understanding and adherence to the importance of diversity in everything you do in your life.

And so if I think about my origins and how it changed, especially as I came to this university and how it impacted me, for me, that is the biggest influence I had and something I never really saw when I picked UCLA as the place to come for school.

TW: And then what made you – what was that kind of, I guess, light switch moment for you where it’s like, “OK, there is this importance of diversity,” as you say?

RC: I think it may have just been seeing and living and being a part of a community, living in the dorms your first year and being around hundreds of students in your classes and just being surrounded by a diverse group of students that wasn’t so white bread, which is where I came from, and just connecting with them on just a real natural, organic level and just kind of, I don’t know, just feeling and figuring out over time that these things that people try to use to separate and cause friction between people just – it doesn’t matter.

And I don’t generally look at people or label people based on whatever they are, whether it’s race, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, whatever. I don’t even think about these things anymore. I just think about who the person is and what they are. And I really feel like – I know it came from my experience at this school. And for me, again, what was such a dramatic shift of what I had experienced when I was growing up in high school.

TW: And do you feel like your sexuality played a role in this?

RC: It may have. Look, I’m an out and proud gay man. I didn’t come out until, I think it was in my freshman year at UCLA. And maybe because the LGBTQ community at UCLA was still in its infancy, let’s call it – especially the organizations that were student organizations that were in infancy – that I saw them sitting alongside all of the other, what were then called minority groups or however they were classified, and seeing sort of that struggle for recognition, the struggle for equality, the struggle for acceptance and I guess being able to connect or relate to that because of my own personal experience.

TW: And what led you specifically to choose UCLA, especially coming from Northern California?

RC: So, look, I had – I was fortunate enough to have done well in high school and studied hard, and I had a choice of schools. In the end, it came down to UCLA, Berkeley and Columbia in New York. And I focused on UCLA after I took a campus tour, honestly, and I was just blown away by the beauty of this campus and the surrounding campus and surroundings around the campus. And just the – it’s funny, it’s the smallest footprint of a campus in the UC system, but I feel it flows so well, and it feels just very warm around here.

And that’s what attracted me to come here. I think it’s also because it was 350 miles away from my hometown, and it gave me a little bit of distance but still kept me in the same state. And it was – look, I came into UCLA as an engineering major. I never expected it to end up shifting the way that I did, but it was also one of the top programs in engineering. That was the attraction.

TW: And what specific engineering did you come into?

RC: I think I was electrical engineering major coming in, which is – it’s a tough program, and it’s hard to – today it’s even harder to get in. But after taking a bunch of classes, I distinctly remember actually taking a physics class where I was terribly bored, no disrespect to engineers or physics majors. I was terribly bored and just decided, “This is not for me.”

And I had taken an undergraduate econ class as one of my general ed classes and felt like it connected with me a little better. And next thing I know, I left the school of engineering. Probably one of the biggest, most important decisions of my life was literally walking into that – I can’t remember the name of the hall the engineering is based – and literally saying, “I want to transfer out. I want to go over to Letters and Science.” And they’re like, “Do you know what you’re doing here? Because if you want to get back in, you have to reapply just like you’re a brand new student.” And I’m like, “No, no, this is it. I’m doing it.” And went over there, became undeclared – I mean, became an econ major, then econ biz major.

TW: And now we’re going onto your UCLA days. And it was interesting when we were walking here, you just talk about the many differences that you’ve seen, talking about the additions of, like, De Neve and just the buildup of the Hill. You talked about how you said students only could live in the dorms for one year. But let’s go back to 1984. What was the campus atmosphere like at UCLA when you attended? And this follow-up question, what or who were your favorite classes or professors?

RC: So, I mean, the campus in ’84 had been somewhat refreshed. UCLA and USC were two of the – what are they called – during the Olympics in ’84, two of the hosts for the athletes. Two of the athlete villages.

TW: Yeah. Olympic Villages.

RC: Olympic Villages. So the athlete villages were at, one of which was at UCLA. So things were somewhat refreshed, but in a kind of very basic way, not in a luxe way, but the campus felt fresh. And you’re 18 to 19 years old. Everything’s exciting and new around you. You’re in a brand new place. I love going to school here. I had an amazing experience at UCLA. I always felt at home here. And just the campus itself, whether it’s the architecture or the grassy fields or Bruin Walk, the places sitting in the study carrels – I don’t know what it’s called now, but YRL or Powell Library. Powell has amazing – so much history and nostalgia to it. There’s just some amazing things on this campus that are really wonderful.

And those feelings and memories kind of come back to me every time I come back to campus. So those are the things that drove me. And that’s what really, I think, helped make my experience here so good.

TW: And what were the specific clubs that you probably wanted to join while you’re out here?

RC: I guess I remember more about just having all the opportunities to do things and getting involved in things. I remember some time spent at the radio station. I remember some time spent – I remember applying for a job at the Daily Bruin and not getting in.

TW: Well, look at you now.

RC: And then, actually – and for 2 1/2 years, the last 2 1/2 years I was at school, I was a community service officer. So I think that program still exists.

TW: I think so, yeah.

RC: Where there were several foundations of that program, which was the evening walk program to walk students – at the time, I think, was only women. They now open it up to all genders across campus. You can call and have someone come and walk you across campus.

TW: Yeah, they still exist.

RC: And out into the adjacent areas in the apartments and stuff. I was also really big in the van program, which I think also still operates, where they have these van-specified routes that kind of go around campus in the evenings.

TW: Yes. Yes.

RC: And then also doing security – and definitely in the hospital, in the old hospital, not the new Reagan hospital, and different buildings across campus. And even doing security, like during sorority rush, they would have someone standing out there just kind of patrolling, making sure no one’s coming along trying to do anything inappropriate with the women that are rushing the sororities, things like that.

And that was actually an experience that I really enjoyed because it got me even closer to the campus. I got to know the campus even in more detail because I was always walking around and doing things all around. I mean, I knew this campus like the back of my hand and all the little places you could go and little private things, places or private, more like quiet places you could go and hang out. And it was – yeah, it was a great experience.

TW: And then mentorship. Who was your mentor? Who led you to where you are today? And what was their advice?

RC: That’s a good question. I don’t know if it’s anyone specifically, but I think about the people that I worked for in the first three, four, five years out of school that I really respected and who I saw myself in a little bit or where I wanted to be with my life and my career. Those are the people, I think, that really stuck with me and became mentors for me.

There’s one in particular, someone who I still am still close with. He was my boss when I was at Largo, and I wasn’t at Largo – first got there, I was like four years out of school. And he’s somebody that I just was like, “Wow, he’s taken this career path. It’s really kind of cool.” He’s done some things that were a little bit risky or jumping around, but always landed on his feet and had a really solid head on his shoulders and just really smart about things. Yeah, but also he had this wild and crazy personality. And I think at the time, I wasn’t quite cracked out of my conservative shell.

And I think I ended up kind of conservative, at least on my outward appearance, not about my personal or political beliefs, more about just being less reserved as a person. And I think that actually can help me kind of crack out my shell a bit too, over time.

TW: And so it’s 1988, fresh out of college. How do you even get to being a CFO as a business economics student? You started your career as a senior accountant at Ernst and Young. What led you to the business side of the film industry? And in that, yeah. Talk more about your experience being VP and CFO at Largo. You were 26, right?

RC: Yeah. So, I mean, look, I – the career path I took was not the one I set out on. When I was graduating, I actually wanted to go and study more. I wanted to go and get a master’s or Ph.D. in econ and become an academic and teach at the university level. But I was tired. I had a – like I said, I had a kind of competitive, challenging high school, and then I had four – I finished here in four years, which was not always the path. It takes longer, and I just wanted to take a break. And friends of mine were applying for jobs at what were then the big accounting firms.

And I reluctantly went for one of those jobs, thinking, “Hey, if I can be coming out of school and be a professional wearing a suit, day one, that would be kind of cool.” And as I started interviewing with those firms, I thought to myself, “OK, I think I’m going to stay living in LA.” I made a group of friends that I have a clan that I can hang out with and do things with. If I’m going to stay in LA, there were two really big industries at the time. There was the aerospace industry, mostly in the South Bay, and then there was the film and TV business. And I was more interested in the film and TV side of things. And I said, “Well, I’m going to try a path where I try to find a position at one of the accounting firms that has a lot of film and TV clients. And maybe that becomes a path towards me eventually becoming CFO of a studio.”

Well, ultimately that plan long-term paid off where, you know, I did go to work, I did get offers from the firms that had lots of those clients in film and TV. I went to work at one of them – that was EY (Ernst and Young). I got immediately onto only film and TV clients after 2 1/2 years with some very, very great experience. But then all of a sudden, snap of your fingers – within three, four weeks, my two largest clients either got acquired or went bankrupt. And I had nothing on my schedule. And I was like, “What are they going to put me on now? They could put me on some manufacturing client.” And so I left.

I went to Disney in a very challenging position where I was the only CPA accounting background type sitting alongside these, like, Ivy League MBAs, and learned a whole different aspect of things, sort of a behind-the-desk corporate experience in the TV animation division at Disney, learned all about animation, learned all about just kind of how these big corporations work and got exposure to the whole corporate finance side in Disney Corporate and – amazing time. And I was only there a year, but it wasn’t the right fit for me at the time. That was a very challenging environment to be working at one of the major studios, in particular at Disney.

And then the CFO at Largo, who was one of my clients in my EY days, approached me about an opportunity and it finally came together and I left and I ended up landing at Largo, which was kind of two different companies, over seven years. The first three years I was there, it was a full-fledged development, production, distribution company, producing films with Fox and later with Universal, that became modest budgeted movies, some of which became hits, some were some misses.

And then the parent company, JVC of Japan, which is the electronics company, said, “No, we don’t want to do this on a big scale like this anymore.” They wanted to scale back. And we went from a company of 55 people down to 11. And I was one of the 11 that stayed with the new business plan where we were going to become a company that co-financed or actually produced and/or co-financed movies just to take the foreign rights, keep the Japanese rights for JVC to use and exploit in Japan, then sell off the rest of the world and make a profit margin on it.

And we did that for the next three or four years. And then, unfortunately, after two or three movies that were produced that did not do so well, JVC said, “OK, you were making a lot of money every year. Now you had one lost year.” Boom, they pulled the plug, they were done, and then that was over.

And then I kind of got fortunate in that I had some good connection to the industry. And then next at New Regency, where I went in there, and when I left Largo, I was the de facto CFO. They wouldn’t give me the title because I couldn’t be a non-Japanese executive working for a subsidiary that had that title. So they wouldn’t give it to me. But I was functioning as the CFO. So when I landed at Regency, I went in there as a controller position, which is not a job or a role that I wanted, but I thought, “Well, let me get in there, roll up my sleeves, see how it goes.”

And boy, the first three, four, six months, that was a challenge. It was – my boss at the time was like, he acknowledges, yeah, he had someone that I replaced that did not work out well. And I had to really fix things and get that machine of an operation growing smoothly and working. And I was able to do that. And within a few years, I was promoted all the way up to be the deputy CFO of the company.

And yeah, I spent 12, almost 13 years of my career there, and a lot of really big uptimes, some really difficult downtimes. But when you’re – New Regency is really a unique place in this town in that, in Hollywood, in that it straddles between the major studio space and the major independents. And because it really makes films like an entrepreneurial company, but it also makes films like a studio and has to do distribution, so it kind of falls in between.

And in many ways, that was the best CFO job in town. But there were other things that made it very difficult. And as it is in any of these larger independent or studio positions, it can be something of a pressure cooker environment that you don’t realize you’re in until you actually get out of. And when I ended up leaving that position in 2012, it took me six months of kind of decompressing to realize how much of a pressure cooker environment it was.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret the time there at all. It was an amazing time, and it was time for me to move on to something else and take a little bit of a break in my career at the time.

TW: And when you’re in an environment, as you say, a pressure cooker environment, how do you decompress?

RC: Well, first you leave the job that you’re in, which is difficult to do because that means there’s no paycheck, and then it’s just taking time away. It’s just not having the constant flow of email you have to respond to, not having the calls coming at night or having things with tight turnaround times constantly.

It’s interesting because it wasn’t because my operation, the team that worked for me were amazing and fantastic, and we always had things on time, accurate, reliable. All of our stakeholders were happy with what we had. It was everything else that was going on around you and trying to keep everything else going and happy and responding to everyone’s asks and whims. And that’s the hard part. Being in the C-suite of a company, especially a smaller company, is what’s challenging.

But I’ve actually found that that is what fits with me. Being in a small-to-midsize company, in the C-suite, where you have a real influence over things but you also still have that entrepreneurial feel, and you have that small company environment, and that just happens to work best for me.

TW: And then from 2012, you didn’t get into Village Roadshow until 2021.

RC: Yeah. But in between, there was a few things. I was doing a lot of consulting work over the next couple years. Also, we bought a house that we ended up – a house that’s way too big for us, but it was more of an opportunity over time. Took that house, tore it down to the foundation, built all the way back up. That was about a year and a half project in itself.

I also worked for 2 1/2 years as a CFO for a finance company, which was really an interesting experience for me because all my experience previously had been on the corporate finance side, working for production distribution companies. This was where, in my experience, I had so much exposure, interaction with the banking community that services Hollywood, right – the middle market of Hollywood, not the big studios, but everything in the middle.

And to then flip and go to a company where you’re essentially a banker and you’re sitting alongside the commercial banks competing for business, it was a whole different experience and a whole different viewpoint on things, but it also was something where I was able to bring a perspective to the deals we were looking at and investing in in a way that they had never been able to do before.

So it was never really the right fit for me. I was there for only about 2 1/2 years, and then I left. And then after doing some more consulting, which, again, consulting doesn’t really fit with me very well either. I do it, I’ll do it. It’s like – but it’s not the right fit – was when I was approached about that opportunity at Village Roadshow.

I actually originally started there – it’s a funny story. The chief operating officer had brought me in. He actually, it was who I worked for when I was at Regency. We knew each other for 25 years now. And he originally started talking to me about a potential change in the summer of 2019. I think we met about it and talked about it four or five times, and then my predecessor left in January 2020. You might guess what dates I’m approaching at this point.

And then it was the first week of March of 2020 that we got together again for coffee, and we’re talking, and he goes, “OK, I’m finally ready to pull the trigger. I want to bring you in. I need help working on this big financial transaction. How about I’ll bring you in on a consulting basis for a few months? Then you’ll see how it goes.” I was like, “Sure, I’m about to go on a ski trip. As soon as I come back from the ski trip, I can start.” Well, and I even – we even had a consulting agreement. I assigned it. I was supposed to come in and start on March 21, 2020.

Well, ski trip never happened because I ended up canceling it when – the day before? No, the day I think I canceled that ski trip, the day that the ski resorts closed for Covid, first shutdown. And then, of course, the shutdowns happened. And so we just said, “Look, let’s put a pin in it.” And then it was a few months later, it was in June, when he’s like, “OK, we’re still working on this deal. We’re all working remotely. You still want to do this?” I’m like, “Yeah, let’s do it. I’m at home. I’m at home like everybody else.” And, yeah, so it was six months as a consultant and then full time since January 2021.

TW: And then, so we’re in the present now, 2021 to now. You worked at all these notable companies, and how do you stay calm and grounded in these positions of power?

RC: So for me, it’s about – it’s going to sound a little crazy. It’s foundations of being organized. You know, my mother taught me when I was young about being organized and staying on top of things. And my parents used to drill home the importance of being a good student, and that’s served me well.

I can’t get away from that. Did it also kind of maybe hinder my development on my personality as a self and maybe bring me inward many times in my younger years? Sure. But then as I got older, I began to realize the importance of what she instilled in me.

And I feel I’m able to sort of have a grasp on and not get freaked out by the pressures of these positions I’ve held because I feel like I’m always on top of things. Like, I’m never behind in trying to catch up on things. I communicate with people about where I’m at with something. I never let somebody’s expectation go unaddressed or unrealized, and it’s just a confidence that I’ve developed.

We all have our challenging days, and it’s those times when you’re in the shower in the morning and you’re scrubbing your hair, washing your hair or whatever, you maybe have those thinking moments. I might be thinking about all these different things that are going on in the workday that’s coming up or what’s happening, but I always just say to myself, “Robert, you got this. No problem. You’ll get through all of it. You know what you’re doing.” I just, I don’t doubt myself. And if I feel like I’m going to need help with something, I’m going to reach out to something and get help, and I just – but I just feel so confident about my capabilities and what I’ve, what I know, what I can reach out to as resources that I can conquer any of these things.

TW: And with that being said, one would say that you’re at the prime of your career. Do you feel like you’ve reached your zenith, or do you feel like you can do more?

RC: Honestly, I feel like I can do more. I don’t feel – you know, I had friends when I left Regency, which is – I was only 45 years old. I had a lot of friends that said, “Hey, you know, you’ve done well with your career. You’ve done well in the stock market, you’ve done well with real estate. You could just retire and be done.” I was like, “Uh uh, I’m not done.” Not – and I’ve been close, and I’ve just been careful about the kind of the full-time, behind-the-desk jobs that I’ve taken.

I still, even now, as the company I’m at now, we’re at a point where we’re going to go one direction or another as we’re seeking out some new investors right now. And I want to be – I’m going to be part of that new phase of the company as we move forward. But if it doesn’t play out – like I’m not done, and I keep thinking about the things that I might want to do with my career. I mean, I’m 58, and I don’t feel myself stopping in the next several years. I feel I have a lot in me still. I feel like I could create a company. I feel like I could create new things. I’m not done.

TW: Where would you want to go from here?

RC: You know, I have some ideas. I won’t spill specifically, but, you know, there’s a lot of different ways to start a company and to find a niche that isn’t being served or to develop a product that isn’t in the marketplace yet or a version of a product that is in the marketplace and kind of just putting it all together.

There’s also some very creative ideas that I have about meaning in the creative space that I want to explore whether those end up being lucrative or not. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe there’s some other way of creative expression, but – yeah, I just feel like I’m definitely not done. Got a lot more to do.

TW: Inspiring. We’re going to close. Do you have any advice that you would give to current UCLA students? Because you walked us through the beginning to the end and, well, this isn’t the end because you’re not done.

RC: No, not done.

TW: So what would you – what advice would you give to UCLA students?

RC: I’d say the biggest advice I can give is to always set the bar high. Never settle for doing the minimum or the least required. Challenge yourself. Set the bar high. Aim for that high bar. You may not always get there, but you’re going to learn. If you don’t, you’ll learn how to get there over time.

But just don’t settle for mediocre or average or the lowest minimum required. Set the bar high. Aim for that high bar and just go for it and keep going for it because you’re going to get there over and over, over time. And as you do, it will build your confidence. And once you have that confidence, you know you can set the bar as high as you want.