Leelai Demoz

Leelai Demoz is a producer, theater artist, and filmmaker whose work spans Broadway, film, and television. He is the founding partner of Highwire Media, a production company based in Chicago operating across film, television, and theater. Demoz is an Academy Award–nominated producer and earlier in his career served as Executive Director of the Schoolhouse Foundation in New York.

Demoz made his Broadway appearance in 1993 in The Song of Jacob Zulu. His theater work has extended into institutional leadership as well: from 2019 to 2022, he served as Associate Artistic Director of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago. During that tenure, he helped develop Steppenwolf NOW, the company's digital programming initiative launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In film, Demoz directed and produced the documentary On Tiptoe: Gentle Steps to Freedom (2000), a film about the South African group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The documentary received both an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Short Subject and an Emmy Award nomination. He later produced Difret (2014), a feature film executively produced by Angelina Jolie. Difret premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award, and subsequently won the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. Demoz is also a former recipient of an SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grant.

Beyond his producing work, Demoz has participated as a public speaker and panelist at events including the "Black History 24/7/365" program at Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre and programming at UCLA's African Studies Center. He is married to Kelly Demoz, née Kelly Marie Moriarty.