A college roommate can remain a name in an old photograph. In Raj Choudhury’s working life, that relationship has kept finding new jobs. Jeff Hilimire was there at the start, when the two launched a business in their early twenties. On October 5, 2026, Alloy, the agency Choudhury leads, announced that it had acquired Dragon Army, the customer experience company Hilimire founded in 2013. The friendship now has another business chapter.
The whole Dragon Army team is joining Alloy. Its name will be retired as the businesses come together under Choudhury’s leadership. User experience, development, creative work and strategy are among the capabilities arriving with it. An acquisition announcement usually explains what the buyer gets. This one also carries a quieter story about people who have spent years learning how to work together, then found another reason to do it.
A designer with somewhere else to be
Choudhury’s earliest professional interests were visual. He began as a designer, found web design in the late 1990s, and combined the work with backpacking and snowboarding. At 22, he co-founded his first agency, Spunlogic. There is something pleasingly unpolished about that beginning: a young person discovering a useful skill while still making room for mountains. The business plan had competition from the weather.
Design led him toward technology, then toward the mechanics of running a business. That progression matters. His later work assembling agencies began with knowing something about what agency people actually make. Hilimire was both his college roommate and his early partner. Their friendship survived differences in temperament and approach. Choudhury has described those differences as a way for each to keep learning from the other.
His geography had already changed before the agencies arrived. Born in Uganda, he moved to London at nine. He studied economics and geography at Kingston University and later earned an Executive MBA at Georgia State University. Atlanta became home; today he lives there and co-parents three children. Travel and snowboarding still have a place in the picture.
The unfamiliar chair
The early company became part of a much longer sequence. Spunlogic was founded in 1998 and acquired by Halyard Capital in 2008 to form Engauge. Publicis Groupe later acquired Engauge, which merged with Moxie. Choudhury’s work expanded from building a business with partners to operating inside larger organizations. Eventually, BrightWave brought him into Ansira, where he served as chief delivery and innovation officer.
That sequence looks orderly when compressed into a biography. Living through it involved doubt. In August 2013, as Engauge was sold, Choudhury began his Executive MBA and stayed to help with the Moxie merger. His original idea had been to take time away. Instead, he was starting school while helping combine businesses with more than 600 people.
He wondered how he would lead without the partners who had shared decisions for years. The program’s opening residency helped restore his confidence. Moxie CEO Suzy Deering gave him room to assemble a team; later, at BLiNQ Media, Vikram Sharma did the same. His appetite for the CEO seat grew through those experiences. The ambition emerged alongside an admission: familiar colleagues had provided more support than he once understood.
Seventeen weeks off the clock
In 2015, Choudhury took a 17-week family RV trip through Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest. Two children and two dogs went along. He had taken another four-month travel break in 2009, before children. The longer journey gave him an opportunity to step outside the routines that made work feel indispensable.
His account of returning is candid about the lure of being needed. He missed the pace, the meetings and the feeling of importance before settling into a different rhythm. Eventually came the realization that work and the city could carry on without him. For someone whose occupation involves making organizations function, that is a useful discovery, even if it arrives without a congratulatory email.
He returned ready for another professional chapter. The story also helps explain why time away appears repeatedly in his thinking about employees. A business can occupy a large part of someone’s life while still leaving room for experiences that have no billing code.
Two people, different jobs
In April 2016, he became president of BrightWave, the email and customer relationship marketing agency founded by Simms Jenkins. He had spent five months consulting with the company first. That gave him time to understand its people and culture before taking a permanent role. He was joining something with an existing identity, rather than arriving to invent one.
The division of responsibility was clear. Jenkins brought a sales and marketing background; Choudhury brought operations, creative and technology experience. Each could concentrate on different parts of the company while sharing responsibility for where it went. Choudhury compared the arrangement with the partnerships of his first business. A second capable person could deepen the work instead of duplicating the first.
By April 2019, BrightWave had been acquired by Ansira. Choudhury explained the appeal in practical terms: investment, financial backing, a wider collection of specialists and complementary marketing technology. BrightWave would retain its own brand at that stage. The transaction connected a focused agency to resources it could use as it grew. Scale had a purpose beyond the satisfaction of a larger number.
The calendar has blank spaces
Choudhury’s advice on organizing a working week contains a number that might alarm an enthusiastic scheduler: keep 40 to 50 percent of the calendar available. He learned the idea from a venture capitalist who used crowded calendars as a clue that a leader was spending too much time reacting. Free space allowed thought, unexpected problems and decisions delegated to someone else.
He also developed an eleven-minute starting rule for work he was putting off. Close the distractions and begin. If the task still refuses to move, return later with more information or a different approach. His one-to-one meetings typically lasted 45 minutes, with breaks between them and attention directed toward the other person.
These were habits he described in 2016, rather than a timetable imposed on every colleague. Together they suggest an operator who knows attention needs somewhere to land. A diary filled to its margins leaves very little room for the problem nobody anticipated on Monday.
Ask about the bucket list
A hiring question caught his interest in 2017: what is on the candidate’s bucket list? He liked the possibility that an employer might help someone accomplish a personal ambition. His examples included a skydiving experience or the chance to live in a new city when a company expanded. Those were suggestions, not a claim that every employee received an adventure voucher.
The attraction was specificity. A reward connected to something a person wanted could mean more than a generic gesture. It also required listening before deciding what to give. The question made room for the person who would eventually sit behind the job title.
His interest in workplaces is similarly concrete. By 2018, he had worked on eight office projects, from Spunlogic’s earlier Atlanta spaces to BrightWave’s new office. He advised involving employees, hiring a dedicated project manager and paying attention to how designers and contractors communicated. His own role required judgment about when to intervene and when to step back.
“know when to get out of the way.”
Raj Choudhury, on office projects
Useful skills, freely given
In October 2016, 17 BrightWave employees volunteered to create 57 email templates for 48 Atlanta nonprofits. Choudhury had revived a program Jenkins originally created, called Day of Awesomeness, which made room for work outside billable assignments. The team connected it with 48in48, the nonprofit co-founded by Hilimire and Adam Walker.
The contribution followed the agency’s actual expertise. Organizations receiving websites could also use professional emails for newsletters, event reminders and donation acknowledgments. Choudhury proposed the extra work to Hilimire and helped assemble the team. It was a modest extension of the question he asks in business: what becomes possible when the right capabilities arrive together?
He now serves on 48in48’s board. The organization mobilizes marketing and technology volunteers to build free nonprofit websites, beginning with 48 sites in 48 hours in 2015. His connection with Atlanta also includes Leadership Atlanta’s Class of 2026. When selected, he thanked Ken Bernhardt, Hilimire and Sanjay Parekh for their encouragement, and described participating as a citizen of the city he had called home since 2000.
An agency with room for other agencies
His current chapter began in 2022 with the acquisition of ARPR and his arrival as CEO. Anna Ruth Williams, its founder, became chief strategy officer. Choudhury was drawn to the employee culture already there. The public announcement was delayed while he completed a sabbatical; the team supported that decision. He would concentrate on leadership, operations and finance, while Williams focused on client strategy, growth and marketing.
Alloy’s subsequent combinations have added different kinds of work. Look Listen joined in February 2026, bringing storytelling, production and a studio. That announcement put the agency above 100 specialists. It followed the merger with The Partnership and the acquisition of Hot Sauce. Creative work, communications, media and technology were being assembled within a shared operation.
In June, Choudhury described unifying operations and bringing Alloy’s proprietary AI technology platform fully in-house. The aim was to connect information with action while retaining human judgment. For the former web designer, the tools have changed considerably. The organizational question remains recognizable: how can people with different expertise make something together that they would struggle to deliver separately?
The number arrives late
Alloy ranked No. 2,386 on the 2026 Inc. 5000, with 140 percent three-year growth. Choudhury’s August reflection pointed out that the ranking measured revenue growth from 2022 through 2025. Much of the recent organizational work had yet to appear in the score.
He described integration as a progression through getting people and systems online, sorting practical matters such as tools and billing, then discovering how the combined organization could work. His most satisfying example that year was retaining an agency-of-record account after competing again for a client relationship of more than eight years. New colleagues and capabilities helped the team show what it had become.
Yesterday’s Dragon Army announcement adds another group to that unfinished work. For Choudhury and Hilimire, it also brings an old working relationship into a new setting. The company names have changed over the decades. The interesting continuity is the willingness to begin again with people whose differences have already proved useful.