Arturo Gomez Molina
When Dilan Mistry ’21 arrived at Chapman University in Fall 2017, he did not come to test the waters. He came with a plan. He had already started a small advertising business in high school, but he knew he wanted to build something bigger than freelance jobs.
The decision to attend Chapman came into focus before he even started college. “I knew I needed to be at Chapman to seriously follow and achieve my goals,” Mistry said.
Finding Community and Momentum Early
Once on campus, Mistry leaned into his belief that college is what you make of it. His personal motto, “the more you put in, the more you get out,” carried him through his Chapman experience. That mindset pushed him into student life early, where he found both community and opportunity.
One of the most formative opportunities was joining Alpha Kappa Psi (AKSI), Chapman’s co-ed professional business fraternity. Mistry joined after seeing AKSI members tabling during his first month on campus and realizing professional fraternities existed beyond traditional social Greek life. He stayed involved all four years, served as pledge class president, and later became vice president of alumni for the organization.
“It was a group of really like-minded and driven students,” Mistry said. “We were all driven and determined to pursue something in business, but also still college students who like to have fun outside of class.”
The role exposed him to alumni early and reinforced the key lesson that relationships create opportunities, especially when you invest in them consistently.
Cold Emails that Turned into Real Sets
Mistry was a business major in Argyros College of Business and Economics, but his career vision was rooted in advertising, film, and production. He understood that to build a production company, he needed industry access and hands-on learning. So he did what many students hesitate to do. He reached out first.
“A lot of it was just cold emails,” he said. “Some would reply, and others didn’t but I didn’t let that discourage me.”
Those emails introduced him to Chapman alumni Daniel Malikyar ’17 and Karam Gill ’16 of MGX Creative and Ryan Huffman of Huffman Creative. What started as outreach quickly turned into mentorship.
By the end of his freshman year, Mistry was driving to Los Angeles to work as a production assistant on commercials and music videos, learning the realities of professional production from the bottom up. He said being on set did more than build his resume. It clarified what his future could look like. He watched Chapman alumni operate at the top of the call sheet as directors and executive producers and began to see the path for himself.
“Those opportunities really showed me what advertising and filming could be,” Mistry said. “I really wanted that for myself.”
Building Cross-Campus Connections and NativeFour
That early exposure pushed Mistry to start building his own company while still at Chapman. He launched NativeFour, a commercial production company, going into his sophomore year with the goal of building the company up enough to be self-sufficient by the time he graduated.
Mistry intentionally built friendships and working relationships across campus, especially with Dodge College of Film and Media Arts students who wanted to direct, shoot, edit, and produce. NativeFour’s early work was built through that network and a scrappy approach to production.
“No one ever has everything,” he said. “Everyone has a little bit of resources, so you learn who has what you need and you bring it all together.”
One breakout moment came from an unpaid passion project with Porsche icon Magnus Walker. Mistry and his team spent weeks in Chapman’s library building a pitch deck, landed a meeting with Walker, and agreed to shoot the piece anyway after Walker made it clear he would not pay for content. The final video gained a lot of traction online, and Porsche picked it up with an article spotlighting Mistry’s young company.
“That was the starting point of NativeFour’s journey into the automotive space,” Mistry said.
By his senior year, the work had scaled. Mistry described producing a Motor Trend campaign with a $150,000 budget and a 30-person crew. Some members of the crew were still Chapman students, and the company was already operating at a professional pace.
Mistry credits Chapman’s cross-campus access for helping him grow quickly. Even as an Argyros student, he found meaningful mentorship through Dodge College, including Professor Joe Rosenberg, whose class Agents and Managers helped Mistry understand the business side of entertainment and how to carry himself professionally in the industry. “If there’s one word to describe Chapman, it’s collaborative,” Mistry said.
Today, he is the founder and executive producer of NativeFour, responsible for bringing in work, shaping campaigns with directors, and leading productions for brands and agencies. He still frequently collaborates with Chapman alumni and friends he met during college.
“It’s the coolest feeling ever,” he said. “Getting to bring on all my friends that I had at Chapman that I came up with onto million-dollar commercial campaigns. It’s surreal.”
Looking back, Mistry describes Chapman less as a single turning point and more as a system of momentum.
“You don’t have to wait four years to get involved in the action,” he said. “The alumni are that gateway to get you involved while you’re still in school.”
In Mistry’s experience, the real advantage of Chapman was how quickly effort could turn into access, and access could turn into opportunity.
