Leadership
The people behind the platform.
Ai Media Group is led by operators who have run real media decisions on real client budgets for nearly two decades.
Sergio Alvarez
Founder & CEO
Sergio founded Ai Media Group in 2008 with a straightforward conviction: ad networks shouldn't be the ones measuring their own performance.
That conviction became the company's operational foundation — and eventually, Atrilyx, Ai Media Group's attribution infrastructure built to reconcile media performance across channels, devices, and conversions.
Under his leadership, Ai Media Group has managed more than $1B in media decisions, developed patented attribution technology, and grown into one of New York's recognized performance marketing agencies. His work has consistently focused on solving the structural measurement problems that distort modern media optimization.
Sergio contributes regularly to Fast Company, Entrepreneur, and Forbes on attribution, performance marketing, AI-driven optimization, and the future of media measurement.
He is a bilingual, first-generation American based in New York. Outside the office, Sergio is an avid motorsports enthusiast and co-founder of Ai Motorsports.
Rick Held
Chief Operating Officer
Rick oversees operations across media, sales, technology, and product at Ai Media Group, helping drive the systems behind both the agency and Atrilyx.
He played a central role in shaping Atrilyx's product vision and operational architecture, helping define how the platform reconciles attribution, measures media performance, and surfaces decision-making insights for operators managing real advertising budgets.
Before joining Ai Media Group, Rick spent more than a decade at Twill (formerly Happify Health), where he served as both Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Experience Officer. He led the paid media programs that drove millions of consumer installs and built analytics and reporting infrastructure used by enterprise clients including Google, Microsoft, and Cigna.
His background in operational scale, growth systems, analytics infrastructure, and conversion optimization became a major foundation for Atrilyx's operator-focused product strategy.
Muhammad Arif
Chief Financial Officer
Muhammad joined Ai Media Group in 2017 and has played a central role in the company's financial infrastructure and institutional growth, including its integration into the Blackstone portfolio.
Before joining Ai Media Group, he worked in Blackstone's Portfolio Management Group and PwC's Deals practice, specializing in M&A due diligence and transaction advisory. That background in institutional finance and operational discipline continues to shape how Ai Media Group scales and operates today.
Muhammad holds an MBA from NYU Stern and is a licensed CPA in New York.
Joel Citron
Chief Information Officer
Joel has been with Ai Media Group since its founding in 2008, making him one of the longest-tenured architects of the company's technical and attribution infrastructure.
He has led the development of Ai Media Group's tracking, attribution, and reporting systems from the ground up — including the engineering infrastructure behind Atrilyx. His work spans user-level data capture, identity resolution, ad technology integration, and the operational systems required to make attribution-grade measurement reliable at scale.
Known internally for his deep ad operations expertise and systems-first approach to problem solving, Joel has spent nearly two decades pressure-testing attribution infrastructure against the realities of live media environments.
That depth of operational and technical knowledge is a meaningful part of what makes Atrilyx defensible.
Management
Brent Longo
Senior Vice President, Client Services
Brent has been with Ai Media Group since its founding in 2008, managing some of the company's largest client relationships and helping shape the agency's client services operation. His focus is keeping media strategy aligned with business objectives while ensuring performance translates into measurable outcomes.
Charles Farruggia
Senior Vice President, Partnerships
Charles joined Ai Media Group more than 12 years ago and co-founded the Partnerships division nearly a decade ago. He oversees programmatic, SEO, and traditional media buying, bringing an audience-first, data-driven approach to cross-channel media strategy and growth.
Randy Nappi
Senior Vice President, Client Services
Randy brings 25 years of experience across sales, finance, and client relationship management, including co-founding Marblehead Asset Management. At Ai Media Group, he helped launch the Partners Program and manages many of the agency's largest client relationships.
Georgi Gogua
Vice President, Digital Marketing
Georgi has been part of Ai Media Group since inception and brings more than 23 years of digital marketing experience. He leads strategy, implementation, optimization, and performance oversight across some of the agency's largest and most complex media portfolios.
Ethan Clarke
Vice President, Client Services
Ethan is a founding member of Ai Media Group and has managed digital marketing campaigns for more than 15 years across search, display, video, CTV + OTT, and social. In 2011, he founded the company's South Florida division and continues to lead complex multi-channel initiatives for both direct clients and agency partners.
Beate Liepina
Director of Media Strategy
Beate leads media strategy across paid search and paid social at Ai Media Group, managing complex client portfolios across healthcare, beauty, consumer goods, telecom, and education. Her background spans both agency and enterprise media environments, including director-level leadership across search and social strategy. She focuses on translating cross-channel media execution into measurable business outcomes across large-scale client engagements.
Colton Berger
Senior Digital Media Project Manager
Colton brings a software development background to project management, with experience leading technical initiatives across ad tech, hospitality, and travel. He applies that engineering foundation to managing complex digital media and infrastructure projects from inception through execution.
Benjamin Crane
AI Specialist
Ben joined Ai Media Group in 2025, focused on building applied AI systems that support media strategy, sales tooling, and competitive analysis. His background spans machine learning, data pipelines, and automation, with an engineering-first approach to making AI operationally useful inside real media workflows.