Kia Zokaei
Chief Executive Officer
Founder
Founder and chief executive of Gentleman Cowboy Productions — a boutique, senior-led production company built on decades of broadcast craft and interactive digital work, now with AI threaded through both.
His role at Gentleman Cowboy Productions
Kia founded Gentleman Cowboy Productions on a straightforward premise: every client deserves senior leadership that answers for the work, and a crew assembled for the job at hand. As founder and chief executive he sets the studio's strategic direction: where it competes, the client and agency partnerships it pursues, and the capabilities it invests in next, from broadcast craft to AI video and AI digital production. Every engagement, brand or agency, is held to the standard he sets.
Leadership stays senior and the crew scales to the job, which is how the studio takes on a two-week digital build and a full broadcast package with the same standard, and the same leadership accountable for both.
Executive and commercial production
Kia built his career producing for global brands — entertainment, technology, automotive, retail, financial services, and government — the kind of work where a spot has to clear brand review, legal, and broadcast spec without losing whatever made it good in the first place. That grounding, from development and casting through production and post supervision, is why he now leads at the executive level: he sets the strategy and the standard every job is held to.
The brands the studio has crewed for span eight verticals — automotive, entertainment, financial services, government, healthcare, retail, technology, and telecommunications — including Wells Fargo, Toyota, AT&T, Xfinity, Spectrum, the US Army, 23andMe, and Asus. The current reel lives on the portfolio page.
- Automotive
- Entertainment
- Financial Services
- Government
- Healthcare
- Retail
- Technology
- Telecommunications
Digital production and creative technology
Alongside the film work, Kia has spent his career on the interactive side of production — websites, applications, and augmented and virtual reality builds, delivered against the same specs-and-deadlines discipline as a broadcast spot. That dual track is the reason Gentleman Cowboy runs two service lines rather than one: film and video production — commercial production, brand films, AI video production, editorial, sound and mix, color and finishing — and AI digital production, covering websites, app development, augmented reality, virtual reality, and AI operations.
Working across agencies, brands, and digital platforms tends to teach the same lesson twice: the constraint is rarely the idea, it is everything between the idea and a finished, on-spec deliverable. That gap is where he points the studio.
AI in the workflow
The studio's position, and Kia's, is that AI belongs in the workflow rather than in the credit line. It compresses the parts of production that were always overhead — versioning, iteration, localization, the long tail of deliverables — so senior people spend their hours on the calls that need judgment. What a client sees is faster turnaround and more options at the same standard of finish, from a crew that still shoots, cuts, mixes, and grades like the craft matters. That is the thread running through both service lines, and it is the reason the studio takes on digital and AI work rather than treating it as somebody else's department.
See how the studio produces AI video →Gentleman Cowboy Productions
Gentleman Cowboy Productions is a U.S.-based boutique production company founded and led by Kia Zokaei. It combines decades of broadcast craft with AI video and AI digital production, and it takes on commercial production, brand films, AI video production, editorial, sound and mix, color and finishing, websites, app development, AR and VR experiences, and AI operations.
To reach Kia directly, email howdy@gentlemancowboy.com or book a call below.
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