David Williams - Principal

Media Business Specialist

David is an experienced executive and entrepreneur in the field of International Marketing with a 20 year track record building successful Brands and businesses.  He is a pioneer in the creation of advertising and marketing businesses in emerging markets. His background and experience have afforded him a deep understanding of the Media and Marketing industries across multiple countries and companies, both as an executive and owner.

His professional career began in the U.K. with one of the world’s leading brand-builders: Walt Disney Productions. From there, he moved to Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising London.  After 7 years in the London office he  opened the Saatchi & Saatchi office in Poland in 1991, where he served as CEO for 6 years.

In 1997 Williams teamed up with like-minded Entrepreneurs to establish ‘Atomic Media Group’, a company committed to the creation and development of media properties in multiple counties. AMG developed groundbreaking television and print properties including “Atomic TV” in Poland, and “Machina” magazine. Atomic TV was the first local-language music TV station in Eastern Europe (later sold to UPC/MTV) and Machina grew to become the premier youth culture magazine in the market (later sold to a VC fund) Another key media property, was the youth television channel “TV K lumea” in Romania.  This property was market leader in the youth TV segment every year of its 7 years of operation until it was sold to SBS International (a KKR company).

Mr. Williams has also developed businesses in the areas of TV production, Internet development, Internet Media sales platform, Digital TV broadcast, Radio, Mobile phone marketing and video, and consulting.

Giuseppe Mirante - Senior Advisor

Corporate Finance and Restructuring

Giuseppe Mirante is a partner at Serone Capital Management LLP, where he is responsible for research and origination of credit and private capital investments. He is also the founder of Tigon Capital Limited, an advisory and interim management platform catering to alternative investors in Southern and Central/Eastern Europe. Previously, Giuseppe was Managing Director at Cyrus Capital Partners, a credit and special opportunities fund, where he originated, analysed and executed credit and distressed debt investments.  Prior to that, he was an investment analyst at Trafalgar Asset Managers, an event-driven/special situations hedge fund. Giuseppe also held positions in private equity investing at Morgan Stanley and Rhone Capital, and corporate finance at Citibank and Goldman Sachs. He holds a bachelor degree in business administration from the UAS Munich and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Giuseppe speaks fluently Italian, German, Spanish, French and Portuguese.

Maciek Gorzkowski

Digital Marketing Specialist 

Based in San Francisco, Matt is a highly experienced marketing expert with specific expertise in digital strategy, implementation and integration. Having worked on the agency side for over 15 years he has a unique insight gained from working directly on client communications campaigns all the way through to agency restructuring and digital integration. Matt has worked extensively in International Agencies both in Management and as Business Unit owner. His passion is finding new and innovative digital solutions to business issues and problems. Matt is focussed on value creation and has achieved this in local and international markets having established his own digital agency business, which was acquired by one of the leading International Network Agencies. Whilst acquiring a deep marketing communications skill set working in the communications world, his key skills are focussed on the development of innovative digital solutions.

Andre Burgess    

Media Content Business - IP, Mobile VAS, Content Transformation

Andre has huge experience of commercial, marketing and product innovation in the field of digital media, in particular IP and content-based products and services.  His specialty is in delivering new commercial opportunities for Telecoms network providers, content owners, broadcasters, brands and publishers.  His experience spans 17 years and has afforded him a deep understanding of both the media and telecoms space as well as emergent digital industries. For seven years, Andre ran the highly successful Crucible Media which blended expertise and industry contacts in the Television, Internet and fixed/wireless Telco sectors, with advanced knowledge of service development, content production and distribution, marketing, and rights management.  Clients included Working Title Films, Universal pictures, Nokia, ICAP, Aardman Animations, Alliance Atlantis and A&E television Networks. 

 

Prior to Crucible media, Andre worked at Three UK, the 3rd Generation mobile operator, where he managed the end to end development of Three's Entertainment services, including Games and personalised Multi Media content, as well as establishing and delivering partnerships with several leading content owners.  Previously he was responsible for the strategy and implementation of an Interactive Entertainment channel for ntl's Digital iTV, Broadband PC, DAB and mobile platforms, which included 23 premiere Content brands.

More recently Andre has also applied his knowledge in digital media to help develop information and communications services within the environmental sector.

Charlie Dilks    

Music Industry - Artists, Production, Branding, Integration

Charlie Dilks is a music industry executive with 18 years international experience throughout the whole industry. He started his career as a booking agent but moved on to work in A&R at RCA Records and then to Infectious Records. He moved to BMG Music Publishing where he was also responsible for Famous Music. He became Membership Director for ASCAP based in London with responsibility for Europe where he worked with publishers and writers (Max Martin, Guy Chambers, Absolute) and then moved to Sweden to become A&R Director for Bonnier Music. More recently he was President of Global One where he signed and oversaw the recording, production, implementation of 20 individual records with 20 multi-platinum selling artists across 20 territories. Over the years he has worked with acts including Travis, Ronnie Wood, Coldplay, Sir Paul McCartney, Massive Attack, Alanis Morissette, The Stereophonics.

Maciek Szczesniak

Digital Business Solutions

Maciej describes himself as a turbocharged programmer with a passion for process and control. His key strengths lie in designing solutions and executions in the fields of technology and data integration, Gaming, CMS, and Business focussed solutions. Maciej wrote and sold his first games at the age of 14 and never looked back. He has experience designing programs across multiple industries including Music, TV & Film, Games, Retail, FMCG and E-commerce.   

Maciej only occasionally come out in daylight hours.