Team Leaders
Alario Leading Team
Ruben Figueres
Media Director / Owner
Ruben started his career in Spain, after finishing his MBA at ESADE (Barcelona), he started working for Price Waterhouse before moving to the United States. He handled several Fortune 500 accounts while working at Leo Burnett and later in Telemundo-NBC. Ruben founded the Alario Group in 2002, and since then the company has grown exponentially every year. Ruben’s responsibilities include the General Management of the company as well as annual media negotiations and business development. He has been featured in several publications as an expert in marketing to the Hispanic market. Outside of the work he is an accomplished athlete, screenwriter and loves to travel and spend time with his family.
Michal Siewierski
Chief Producer
Michal Siewierski is a world class TV producer with 10 years of experience and over 500 TV commercials, programs and videos to his credit. Michal Siewierski was born in Poland and raised in Brazil, where he lived for almost 20 years. His background in graphic design and multimedia is well reflected in his work. His commercials have played on several stations throughout the United States and Central America. His primary focus is in producing and directing TV commercials, TV shows and corporate videos. Michal Siewierski specializes in multilingual productions especially in Spanish. Michal is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, Polish and English. He is also considered an expert in several aspects of the production process, from initial stages of pre-production to script writing, shooting and editing. On his free time Michal enjoys flying gliders. On weekends he can be found flying under the clouds of northern Illinois looking for thermals.
Adrian Alonso
Creative Director
Adrian started his career at a young age shooting and editing small short films for a theatre class in high school. Since then, he never stopped working on audiovisual field.
Before Alario Group, Adrian worked as News Editor and Commercial Producer at Univision Chicago and as Field Producer for Bloomberg News Latin America in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As Creative Director at Alario Group, Adrian is in charge of brainstorming ideas, come up with brilliant campaigns and support production department, among other things. Besides writing scripts, he loves playing soccer and travelling.
Bill Rastello
Chief Financial Officer
Bill is a graduate of the University of Michigan with an MBA in finance and economics from Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Chicago. Bill spent 15 years in various management positions with U.S. Gypsum Company before becoming a part owner of Food Ingredients, Inc., an industrial food distribution service. The successful business was sold to a Canadian conglomerate in 2007.
Bill joined Alario in August of 2008 and acts as the Company CFO with responsibility for all financial and administrative support systems. Bill is married with two grown children and is a sports and music enthusiast.
Alvaro Visiers
Creative & Production Consultant
Alvaro Visiers is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker with over a decade of experience in the U.S. Hispanic market. He has worked as a writer and producer at some of the leading media organizations in the U.S., including Univision, PBS, CNN, Metro Networks and the Chicago Tribune, where his work has been recognized with several Emmy nominations and two Emmy awards. His first short documentary “Michael’s Challenge”, which he wrote, produced and co-directed, earned him best documentary awards by the Society of Professional Journalists, the Illinois Associated Press, the Illinois Broadcasters Association and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. His first short film “Community Alert”, written, produced and co-directed by him, has been an official selection at prestigious film festivals around the world, including the Los Angeles Latino Film Festival, the Salerno International Film Festival (Italy) and the Hollywood Black Film Festival.
Julia Marcos
Copywriting and Translation Director
Julia Marcos is a Spanish journalist and copywriter with more than 10 years of experience in Hispanic media and advertising in the U.S.
As a journalist, she has been a writer for RNE (Spanish Public Radio), Efe News Service, Hoy Newspaper, PBS and Telemundo. As a copywriter she has participated in national campaigns for Instituto Cervantes (Spain’s International Cultural Center), Kmart, San Diego City Colleges, Money Gram, KFC, State Farm, Verizon and Motorola.
She holds a B.A. in Journalism & Communications, an M.A. in Radio Broadcasting and a Higher Education Diploma in Classical Ballet and Spanish Dance from Spain’s Royal Conservatory of Dance.