Brandon Tellez

Born in Denver. Grew up learning to read rooms — it started as survival and became something else.

I spent just under a decade in the Air Force as an airborne mission crew member on the E-3 AWACS, flying over active combat zones, logging around 2,500 hours. I worked my way to the top of my career field. The peak was researching, testing, and writing a TTP — a Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures document — that implemented a new datalink procedure for all capable aircraft in the DoD. I separated in December 2022.

Before the Air Force ended, I'd already started writing. After it ended, I couldn't stop.

I started Shoot the Breeze Magazine because I kept meeting people in Oklahoma City who had something real to say and nowhere to say it. Three full issues, one special edition. A city that started to know my name.

Then theatre found me. I fell in love with it the way you fall in love with something you didn't know you'd been missing. I acted in Alice in Wonderland and Almost, Maine. I assistant directed Big Fish — a full musical, every piece of production — and this semester I acted in Romeo and Juliet.

Next week I'm directing my first play. Next fall, I'm directing a full musical: Carrie, over Halloween weekend.

I'm re-enrolled at university, recently accepted to Mensa, and a Sub-Committee Head for the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition. I've got more on my plate than ever before, and I've never felt more like myself.

In an ideal world, I direct something on Broadway. Something I wrote. Maybe something I choreographed.

In the real world, I'm building toward that — one production, one connection, one conversation at a time. The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition. The relationships forming across this city. The work that keeps showing up.

Loresmith is how I fund the dream and do something meaningful along the way. Every business I work with gets the same attention I gave to those residents at 87 years old, the same care I brought to every crew member I trained — the belief that what you're building deserves to be seen and heard the way it actually is.