Biography

Jono spent the beginning of his childhood in San Diego, California. After a series of family deaths, Jono was orphaned and moved to New Orleans to live with his Uncle at age twelve. Determined to return to California, Jono attended the University of California, Santa Cruz. Throughout his time there Jono continued working with traditional art forms, branching out into multiple areas including sculpture, print making, and installation art. This exploration would serve him well in the future, providing the skills to do his own set design, prop creation and costuming. Two years into his college career, Jono discovered filmmaking. Surrounded by talented and motivated classmates, Jono and partner Laura G. Chirinos founded working film group, Before North.

His first feature length film was a docudrama about college life called "One: A Story of Six" (2004). Immediately following One, Jono teamed up with Jay Wertzler to write and direct the ambitious existential western, The Ballad of Jacob Wonder and Wesley Precious (2005). The film debuted a month before he graduated with a BA in mixed-media sculpture.

Eager to return to filmmaking, Jono jumped genres to direct Devin Fearn's zombie screenplay. Over eight months, the Before North crew sacrificed all of their free time to produce The Beginning (2007). Their biggest success to date, "The Beginning" premiered to a sold-out audience of nearly six hundred people at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz.

After finishing "The Beginning", Jono stopped freelancing and eventually became Creative Director of a small Production Company in Santa Cruz. In his spare time, Jono wrote and directed his first short, Spaceman (2009). Spaceman premiered at the Santa Cruz Film Festival in May of 2010 and eventually won Best International Short at the Israel International SF Festival.

In September of 2011, Jono quit his job and co-founded his own production company. Jono primarily works in Silicon Valley, but over the last few years has traveled and lead teams in Kenya's Rift Valley Region, Tokyo, New York and the Heilongjiang Province of China. Recently, he has expanded his horizons, tackling both the world of fiction with his new novel, developing his skills as a comedic singer/songwriter, and began prototyping a series of kids card games.
- IMDb mini biography by: Katie Koumatos

Before North, Jono's production company, was named after the founders' freshman dorm at Porter College where the group met (B building, 4th floor, North Hall).