Alicia Karlin Joins The Circuit Group As Global President of Live

Alicia Karlin has joined The Circuit Group as global president of live, the company’s CEO Dean Wilson announced Tuesday (Jan. 27). With the move, Karlin also brings her firm ASK Management & Advisory into The Circuit Group ecosystem through a joint venture.

Hard techno star Sara Landry is the first joint-venture signing under this new partnership, with Karlin also bringing management clients Annie Tracy and Brandi Cyrus. Having overseen Keyshia Cole’s 20th anniversary tour of her album The Way It Is, Karlin is continuing her partnership with Cole and her management team through ASK Advisory.

“I’m not only bringing in my management company, but also the consulting side of the business that allows me to work with other managers, promoters, event producers and people who really want to make an impact in the live space and across music and media, to build lasting careers and to build a different kind of team around artists,” Karlin tells Billboard.

Having most recently served as vice president of global touring and talent at AEG Presents, Karlin has long known The Circuit Group co-founders Wilson and Brett Fischer and says that “when I was considering all of the options and making the move, I was really into what they’ve been building. They are not only building a global management infrastructure, but a real future-facing, artist career-driven company and a model that has a lot of different arms to it.”

“Building that infrastructure around careers is something I’m really interested in,” she continues, “because I think the future of management and of artists’ careers is driven by this kind of management hub and having all these pieces at your disposal… For me, touring is not just generating revenue, it’s adding to the building of leverage across the artist’s entire business. That’s something I’m really excited to bring into the team.”

Karlin has more than 20 years experience in artist management and development, global touring strategy and large-scale festival and event production. At AEG Presents, she helped strategize Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet tour, the sixth highest-grossing tour of 2025 with $77.4 million, according to Billboard Boxscore. She also helped grow the touring careers of artists including Raye, Mitski and The Beaches and was a founding member of the producer team behind Michigan’s Electric Forest festival, where she served as the talent buyer from the festival’s beginning in 2011.

Meanwhile, The Circuit Group was launched launched in 2023 by Wilson and his wife/business partner Jessica Wilson along with Fischer, David Gray and Harvey Tadman as a collective of management companies including Seven20 and Ayita. The company is focused on creating opportunities for artists across verticals while also offering traditional management.

In November, The Circuit Group launched Circuit Capital, a platform for acquiring and scaling music assets and cultural IP. Circuit Capital is backed by Create Music Group, which is giving Circuit Capital access to more than $500 million to achieve its goals. Other elements of The Circuit Group include Beat Switch, which provides distribution, label services and support to independent artists and Red Wire Publishing, the company’s music publishing division.

Karlin has known Landry for years and first booked her for Electric Forest 2024, although that set was thwarted a thunderstorm that led to the two women hanging out together backstage, with the relationship eventually evolving into a client/manager relationship.

In terms of working with Landry, “she didn’t need any help getting bigger during,” Karlin says of the California-born, Texas-raised hard techno artist who’s exploded onto the scene over the last few years, helping to popularize the genre in the U.S. “When Sara was looking for management, she wanted infrastructure, and I know that working with women was really important to her and that she wanted to stay uncompromised and dedicated to her vision while she scaled it. I think us having a personal history and her being super familiar with me and me being familiar with her was just perfect timing, and the stars aligned.”

“Partnering with The Circuit Group and ASK Management lays the groundwork for expanding my vision on a global scale,” Landry adds in a statement. “From day one, Alicia and the broader team saw beyond the music and fully understood the culture, intention and community I’m building. This collaboration marks the beginning of a bold and transformative next chapter.”

Karlin credits legendary industry execs including Michelle Jubelirer, Marlene Tsuchii, Cara Lewis and Debra Rathwell with helping guide and inform her career and inspiring her mission to work with and elevate women in the industry.

“I got to learn under and work with all of these women who were the first females in these spaces and who knocked down doors for us to thrive,” she says. “I think that’s really important, and I want to pass that along, mentor women and work with women teams and artists and open doors for them in the same way.”