Board of Advisors

James R. (Jim) Menego has 39 years of experience in Product Lifecycle Management Sales and Executive Roles. From 2019 to today Jim has provided Consulting Services to SPLM Channel Partners through his company, Map One L.L.C.

Jim held multiple sales roles in his career at Siemens PLM. Beginning as a sales rep in 1980 he moved through various roles in the organization. Jim served as Vice President in the U.S. Sales organization since 2007. He has held various sales, sales management, executive sales management and staff positions in his 37+ year career with McDonnell Douglas, EDS, Unigraphics Solutions and the other legacy companies which became Siemens PLM Software when it was acquired by Siemens in 2007.

Beginning in 2015, he held various positions which included responsibility for America’s Zone Alliance Programs, Academic Programs, and the planning and integration of the OMNEO Product (Big Data Analytics/IoT) into the SPLM U.S. Sales Organization. Jim also worked on the team for Siemens PLM’s integration of a Digital Factory/Product Lifecycle Management go-to-market plan.

In 2013 Jim became responsible for the team that defined the current SPLM Energy Market strategy and he was also a key stakeholder in defining and initiating the current SPLM Consumer Packaged Goods Industry team which was started in 2004.

Jim earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from the Pennsylvania State University.

Gen Fukunaga is an entrepreneur and investor. He recently retired from Funimation Entertainment which he had founded in 1994, sold in 2005 to a public company, purchased back in 2011 and sold to Sony Pictures in October 2017. Mr. Fukunaga serves on several Boards and spends his time as a partner in several private equity groups.

Funimation is the leading distributor of Anime (Japanese animation) including over 700 brands such as Dragon Ball Z, My Hero Academia, Ghost in the Shell, Afro Samurai, One Piece, Akira, Attack on Titan, Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo and Your Name.

Funimation handles in-house, the full breadth of title production, marketing, sales and distribution including the annual production of the English version of over 1,000 TV episodes and movies, a very successful and fast-growing subscription video streaming service, home video sold to all major retailers, broadcast sales to television networks, sales to all major digital download platforms, sales to all major video streaming platforms, theatrical distribution and partnering with over 100 manufacturers of character-based products.

Prior to founding Funimation, Mr. Fukunaga held positions at Tandem Computers (now part of Hewlett Packard), Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and IBM.

Mr. Fukunaga received a Bachelors’s and Masters’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and an MBA from Columbia University.

Arunima Soni Thakur has 25 years of experience and is a “Supply Chain Excellence” guru: Digital 4.0, pioneering work in AI/ML for autonomous, and recipient of Arch Colwell Merit award, SAE 2009 for pioneering work in integrating lean manufacturing with Digital Manufacturing, as well as real-time plant network architecture.

She has served as General Motors North American Operations Manager, as a Six Sigma Master Black Belt at Ford, as CTO and VP Engineering at Ward, as SVP and Global leadership roles at various consulting organizations, leading the plan, design, build of new PLM delivery centers, MES COE, NPI teams, and hiring commissioning of new plants globally. Wherein she streamlined EDI, MP& L, built new manufacturing and warehousing locations, incorporating NAFTA compliance, and JIT for Asian sourcing.

Arunima has built over 9 industry solutions that address the disconnect between product design, new product introduction, and as-built functions within manufacturing operations, that earned her “best-of-breed” awards from industry analysts. She also has received awards at GM, and at Ford (Inuksuk Award), where she championed, led, and executed several large Lean Six Sigma projects generating triple-digit Million $ savings for North American electronics, electrical, manufacturing, sales, and aftermarket warranty divisions at multiple organizations as Salesperson of the year.

As a partner-level leader, she is master of hands-on opening, driving and closing significant new revenue growth, accomplishing high pressure new yearly sales. She successfully manages P& L of $225-550M, driving 22-33% yearly growth. averaging $15+M deal sizes and works with Board and CXO level clients in an advisory capacity, for strategic consulting.

Arunima went to BIT Sindri and earned her BSEE Degree, first class distinction with honors, her MSME & AE FROM West Virginia University. She also went to Harvard Business School CGBL, Lean SSMBB, Certified Change Agent and she is a US Citizen with inactive US Department of Defense Secret Security Clearance

Rajiv Phougat is a seasoned Technology Executive with 20+ years of extensive experience and expertise in leading Digital Transformation of businesses by applying leading-edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, IoT, Blockchain and Cloud. He currently works at Eli Lilly & Company since February 2019 as the Advisor of Strategy & Architecture in the CTO organization.

Before joining Lilly, he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Automotive Industry at IBM where he led the Digital Transformation of multiple automotive clients by delivering solutions to transform products/service, operations and customer experience, resulting in double-digit revenue growth for IBM. He also served as Technical Strategy Leader of IBM Watson focused on delivering Cognitive Solutions that significantly improved the operational efficiency of businesses and provided a competitive edge. He has held technical leadership positions in many global IT consulting and technology research organizations with responsibilities over multi-billion dollars P& L, several million dollars of budget and large multi-country teams of hundreds of employee.

Rajiv holds an MBA (Kelley School of Business, IU), Master’s in IT and BS in Computer Science. He is an advisory board member at Krenicki Center for Business Analytics & Machine Learning, Purdue University. He is founder and chairman of Any Girl Can – a 501(c)3 NGO focused on girl education & empowerment.