• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 19, 2017

Josh Engroff is leaving MDC Partners’ The Media Kitchen and MDC Ventures (formerly KBS+ Ventures) to take on a new role in the burgeoning marketing AI marketplace.

Engroff declined to disclose what his new role would be, but he described his parting from The Media Kitchen as amicable and said that the experience he had as chief digital media officer of the agency -- as well as his ventures role -- was crucial to his next act.

Engroff, who was inducted as one of MediaPost’s Online All Stars in 2016 based largely on the impact he had in TMK’s digital innovation, played a key role in the agency winning Agency of the Year awards in each of the past three years.

“Josh is a real visionary and always knows where the media world is going,” says TMK President Barry Lowenthal. “He's passionate about AI and VR because he fully understands how important those innovations will be for marketers.” 

Engroff, who joined TMK in January 2014 after a long run as a digital native in advertising, media, publishing and a variety of startups and venture capital roles, described his tenure at TMK as leading him into his next role, which he said would involve AI and advanced machine learning for brand marketers, a subject he has written about many times as a MediaPost columnist over the past several years.

In addition to his role servicing clients at TMK and representing the agency’s thought leadership and public speaking, Engroff ran MDC’s vaunted Ventures “Fellows” program, in which a dozen or more of the best and brightest young executives from across MDC agencies participate in a semester of training to learn how to be a venture-backed startup, including the creation of mock startup ideas that culminate in a shootout competition judged by startup veterans and venture capitalists.

Asked to characterize what his next act will be, Engroff offered: “What I’m pursuing is something that, in a very deep way, I know is transforming the world, which is the intersection of AI and marketing.”