The Suits
The Buddy Media Management Team
Millions of people shuffle to work each morning dreading the inevitable criticism and humiliation that comes with working for corporate behemoths dedicated to control through micromanagement. Our management team is dedicated to fostering an environment of mutual respect among a staff of self-starters and deal makers. “The Suits” are the locomotive that powers the Buddy Media train – a group of dedicated and passionate experts who know how to run a business while maintaining an office environment that is both harmonious and hard working.
Michael Lazerow – Chairman & CEO
Michael is a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded four successful internet-based media companies. He has a passion for creating, managing and growing companies from the ground up.
Michael’s first foray into entrepreneurship came with the founding of University Wire, an Associated Press-like network of more than 700 student-run newspapers that is now owned by CBS Corp. U-Wire provides the most in-depth coverage of campus news and student issues and is distributed widely through almost every major college newspaper and most of the major Internet portals. Michael sold U-Wire to Student Advantage, the nation’s leading student membership organization linking 1.5 million students through one affinity card program, in May 1997. As a member of the Student Advantage management team, Michael helped grow Student Advantage from a handful of employees into the premier media and marketing company in the college market with more than 300 employees and $80 million in annual revenue.
Building on his growing experience in the online space, Michael next founded GOLF.com, which was purchased by Time Warner’s Time Inc. division in January 2006. Michael led GOLF.com from a start-up to a multi-million dollar profitable golf media company. Michael successfully funded GOLF.com by raising equity financing from private investors, leading venture capital firms and media companies, including NBC Sports and the New York Times Co. And with a wide network of contacts in the internet and general business community, Michael negotiated and executed successful partnerships on behalf of GOLF.com with Time Warner, NBC Sports, MSNBC.com, Yahoo!, AOL, FoxSports.com, Microsoft, New York Times Co., the PGA Tour, USA TODAY, Knight Ridder, Chicago Tribune, GOLF MAGAZINE, NTT Communications and more than 200 other companies. As part of the acquisition by Time Inc., Michael agreed to join Time Inc.’s GOLF MAGAZINE division for one year as General Manager of GOLF.com and GOLFONLINE.com. In addition to overseeing all of the company’s golf internet properties, Michael sat on a 5-person management team that managed the leading golf publication.
Michael left GOLF.com in February 2007 to start Lazerow Consulting, which helps finance, launch, manage and grow internet-based media businesses. Michael’s client list included CSTV, a CBS Corporation company. At CBS, Michael helped launch two new businesses in the sports community and student media spaces.
Michael lives in New York City with his wife, Kass, two sons, Myles and Cole, and daughter Vivian. In addition to investing in private companies and real estate, he enjoys live music, golf, tennis, poker, fly-fishing, reading, writing and video editing.
Michael graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. with a B.S. and M.S. in Journalism in 1996. His byline has appeared in more than a dozen newspapers, including Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, the Miami Herald, the Delaware State-News, The Capital Times in Madison, Wis., and the Montgomery Journal.
Michael is currently the chairman and CEO of Buddy Media, Inc., a New York-based company that is a leading developer of applications for social media sites, including Facebook and MySpace.
Kass Savarese Lazerow – COO
Kass is a successful entrepreneur with extensive experience in marketing, consulting, and business operations.
Kass began her career by building Jaffe Associates, a leading marketing and management-consulting firm from the ground up. After selling her first successful business venture, Kass moved on to Giant Step, a leading interactive agency and subsidiary of advertising giant Leo Burnett, where she served as Director of Business Development and Director of Public Relations and Marketing. At Giant Step, Kass worked with a client base of blue chip companies that included United Airlines, Oldsmobile, Kellogg’s and Hallmark.
Together with her husband Mike, Buddy Media’s CEO, Kass has founded several successful companies. Her most recent before Buddy Media, GOLF.com, was sold to Time Inc. in 2006. At GOLF.com, Kass served as co-founder, president and COO, where she helped take the company from an idea to a multimillion dollar consumer internet company.
In her current role as co-founder and COO of Buddy Media, Kass’ responsibilities include managing the day-to-day operations of the business, including finance, marketing, PR, general operations, HR and more. This multifaceted position allows Kass to leverage her understanding of the Internet and her experience as a proven entrepreneur.
Kass lives in New York City with her husband, Michael, two sons, Myles and Cole, and daughter Vivian. Kass received her B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth College in 1993.
Jeff Ragovin – Chief Revenue Officer
Jeff has over a decade of experience directing interactive sales efforts at major technology and marketing firms.
Jeff’s experience, leadership, and execution-focused results engendered an impressive history of career achievements. He was the Director of New Business at Acronym Media, one of the largest search marketing agencies in the world, where he was responsible for closing key strategic accounts and growing the organization. His business initiatives have been honed over time and developed with one goal in mind — to bring greater value to all clients and advertisers.
Through an extensive network of interactive marketers, Jeff develops turnkey social media strategies to help clients achieve their marketing and sales goals. In his role as Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Buddy Media, Jeff was responsible for the leadership and growth of the sales organization. As Chief Revenue Officer Jeff continues to focus on growing revenue, deliver profitability, and provide best in class service to Buddy Media customers.
Jeff was born and raised in Manhattan. He loves to travel, enjoys saltwater fishing and writes passionately about weather on www.jeffsweather.com. Jeff graduated from the State University of New York at Oswego with a BA in Broadcasting and Mass Media.
Patrick Stokes – Vice President, Technology
Patrick has been writing code and building web technologies since the early 90’s, when his father, an engineer at IBM, brought home an OS/2 laptop with an internet connection. This passion for technology spurred Patrick into a job as an application developer at IBM, and a college degree in Computer Science at Marist College. After receiving his diploma, Patrick returned to his home state of New Jersey where he led a team of developers at JK Design in delivering web solutions for a variety of large clients.
In 2007, Facebook released their development platform and Patrick immediately positioned himself as one of the social network’s premier developers. After just a few weeks of the platform’s lifespan, Patrick had created 4ca.st Weather, the top weather application on Facebook with over 250,000 users, and Crushes, the top dating application on Facebook with over 1,000,000 users. Crushes was one of the first twenty-five applications on Facebook with 1,000,000 users. Patrick rode Crushes’ success right to Michael Lazerow and Buddy Media. In December of 2007, Buddy Media acquired Crushes and hired Patrick as an application developer.
Patrick’s fingerprints are all over every application launched at Buddy Media. In the summer of 2008 Patrick led the development of the Buddy Brain and was promoted to Systems Architect after it’s launch. In the spring of 2009, Patrick was promoted to Vice President, Technology. At this position, Patrick leads a team of several developers and oversees the complete development cycle of all client and internal projects.
In his spare time, Patrick can usually be found in a NYC card room or losing his winnings at a craps table in Las Vegas.
Matt Zarzecki – Vice President, Product Development
Matt has spent more than ten years creating engaging, interactive products while managing product, technology, and design teams for a number of successful businesses.
Most recently, Matt created CafeMom, one of the fastest growing niche social networks on the Web. Matt’s fingerprints are all over CafeMom, as his vision shaped the site’s user experience and creative design. His innovation and expertise are evident throughout CafeMom, as is his specialty of understanding exactly what is necessary to the creation of an engaging user-facing product. Prior to CafeMom, Matt worked at Next Jump, Inc., a leading provider of corporate rewards and loyalty programs – another home run for Buddy Media, as Matt will spearhead an initiative to revamp and improve our successful AceBucks rewards platform.
As Vice President of Product Development at Buddy Media, Matt is responsible for leading the direction and defining the strategy for user-facing products across all social networks.
Matt grew up outside of Princeton, NJ and is a graduate of Tufts University with a BA in English.
David Honig- Vice President, Platform Sales
David is an online advertising veteran with more than 10 years of experience.
Prior to joining Buddy Media, David co-founded Media6Degrees , where he helped build a technology that provides major brand marketers with targeted audiences using the power of social graph data.
Prior to Media6Degrees David was Vice President, Media, at Didit Search Marketing where he created SearchConnect™, the first integrated media platform that combined Search Data & Display advertising with Re-Targeting. Under his direction, SearchConnect won the ClickZ Marketing Echo Excellence Award in 2007 for Best Behavioral Targeting Personalization technology.
David began his internet online career at online ad giant DoubleClick which has since merged with Google, where he spent four years in various sales management roles.
David draws his strength from his wife and twin girls, and enjoys an occasional golf game, although not very good at the game.
He currently resides in New York City, and obtained B.S. in Business/Marketing from The Ohio State University.
