AdLarge has appointed Nicole Pezzola Leyden as Vice President, Brand Partnerships. Leyden will develop strategic sponsorships and integrated marketing programs for advertisers across AdLarge and the fwd.network, focusing on automotive, financial services, and emerging advertising categories.

Leyden joins with more than two decades of partnership and revenue experience at TED, Scripps Networks, Discovery and the NHL. At TED, she secured sponsorships with Verizon, Meta, Bose, Toyota, Ford, Honda/Acura, Intuit, JPMorgan and Charles Schwab, and built a custom podcast partnership with Morgan Stanley that won industry recognition in consecutive years. At Scripps Networks Interactive, she led monetization across the company’s digital portfolio, including owned-and-operated properties, mobile, premium video, VOD and TV Everywhere platforms, and helped build General Motors’ first large-scale lifestyle branded content initiative, which won an Emmy.

“Nicole has an outstanding reputation for developing innovative sponsorships that deliver real value for advertisers,” said David Cohn, Chief Revenue Officer of AdLarge and the fwd.network, in a press release. “She knows how to connect brands with the right content, the right creators, and the right audiences.”

“The most successful partnerships are the ones that create value for everyone involved: brands, creators, and audiences,” Leyden said. “That’s what AdLarge and the fwd.network do so well.”

The hire adds sponsorship expertise to a company that has spent the past year building out the technology side of its creator and podcast business. In January, AdLarge acquired the assets of Inlet Media, a platform it had used for nearly two years, and named Inlet co-founder Patrick Cedrowski as its first CTO. 

Inlet co-founder Brian Egan was promoted to VP and Head of Product, tasked with developing AdLarge and fwd.’s creator, video, and monetization platforms. Cedrowski said at the time that bringing the technology in-house would let it “accelerate innovation, scale faster, and build a more connected, data-driven ecosystem for creators and advertisers.” That followed the fwd.network’s April 2025 acquisition of Adalyst Media’s portfolio of 25 podcasts, which expanded its slate targeting female audiences to more than 75 shows.

Outside AdLarge, Leyden is a founding member and Head of Impact Partnerships for Women Applying AI, a nonprofit focused on helping women build skills and confidence in AI-driven fields, where she has worked on partnership strategy, outreach and funding.

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