Armughan Rafat Email Address

C-level Tech Executive and Entrepreneur Leader With Proven Track Record to Help Companies Succeed Using Innovation

The Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI) is the largest media, marketing and education organization serving the promotional products industry. ASI connects suppliers and distributors through ASI's robust industry-leading network, which boasts over 25,000 supplier and distributor members. ASI members have access to the world's most powerful promotional product network, ESP, where three out of every four promotional product searches occur. \r\n\r\nASI is fully committed and dedicated to providing members with cutting edge interactive tools, member support, trade shows, educational information and resources that improve business efficiency, drive traffic and win sales. \r\n\r\nWhat is ASI's mission?\r\nASI bridges suppliers and distributors by providing catalogs, information directories, newsletters, magazines, websites, databases, interactive e-commerce, and robust marketing and selling tools.\r\n\r\nWhat are advertising specialties?\r\nAdvertising specialties, also known as promotional products, are practical, entertaining or decorative products like mugs and tee shirts often imprinted with an advertiser's name, logo, slogan or message and given away. These products are often kept by recipients for months, offering great exposure for the advertiser's message.\r\n\r\nFeatured Products:\r\n\r\nESP Web: Source and order every promotional product in the industry from 3,500+ suppliers with ESP Web. \r\n\r\nESP Websites: A user-friendly e-commerce enabled website solution. Choose from 100s of designs. Requires no design experience needed. \r\n\r\nCatalogs: Give clients new ideas and ways of using promo products and stay one step ahead of competitors.\r\n\r\nMagazines: ASI offers a wide range of award-winning publications to help keep your finger on the pulse of the industry.\r\n\r\nShow Booths: Display your products in front of thousands of industry distributors at 5 strategically timed ASI shows.

Proven track record of success in leading technology organizations for mission critical billion dollar and small start-up businesses. Extensive experience aligning high performance teams with corporate vision, developing collaborative partnerships at all levels of the organization, and executing well-defined and prioritized program roadmaps to unlock business value. As a collaborative technology Leader, I bring 22+ years of progressive management and technical experience leading both small and large commercial technology organization. Often brought in as a change agent, I am a highly energetic and goal oriented thought leader who helps organizations use technology as a competitive advantage. I firmly believes in uncomplicating the complicated, and storytelling with simplicity to help articulate the business value with emerging technologies. My expertise include driving enterprise-wide transformation and operational improvement programs leveraging industry-leading technology and business practices. I lead technology organizations for mission critical billion dollar and small start-up businesses. I’m adept at leading and directing globally dispersed, high-performance teams to achieve program and product success. I have steered programs and initiatives aimed at innovating and leveraging emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to deliver solutions that achieve desired outcomes. My background includes enterprise development, high scale engineering, Big Data, AI/ ML and NLP like technologies and building high performance teams with corporate vision, developing collaborative partnerships at all levels of the organization, and executing well-defined and prioritized program roadmaps to unlock business value. Additionally, I steer programs and initiatives aimed at innovating and leveraging emerging technologies to deliver solutions that achieve desired outcomes. As an entrepreneur, I have been part of several startups and have built and sold one in real-time bidding and digital advertisement space in 2013 as co-founder. I am inventor on several patents in high frequency algorithmic trading information and low latency information extraction using machine learning.