Dr. Vinekar is Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and is a subject matter expert in Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience, and Eastern and Western Philosophies. Since 2014, he is in full-time private medical psychiatric practice at Fidelity Mental Health Services in Oklahoma City. He was formerly briefly associated with The Carter Jenkins Center of Tampa, Florida as a trainee for a few years.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shree-vinekar-43380732/

“Dr. Vinekar, my uncle, is a physician, philosopher and a subject matter expert in Eastern and western thinking and professor Emeritus of my alma mater, the University of Oklahoma’s Health and Medical Sciences college. When I started my first company, Mindware in 1996 to create a model driven basis for IT architecture (what has now morphed into what we call no code), I was also dabbling into the structure of written and spoken language. It is then that my uncle suggested to use the grammar of Sanskrit and Korean to formulate the basis for translation of NLP based constructs. Since then, he has been advising me on the basis of instilling intelligence into human-machine interactions. More recently we have published several papers on what we call Existential Intelligence (EI) whose basis is to utilize a 5th order of Cybernetics (which we are also defining) to make AI more pragmatic, sentient, contextual and actionable. This has become the basis for new AI of late where tenets proposed by David Chalmers (the hard problem of consciousness) and Judea Pearl (the ladder of Causality, correlation is not causation) and where companies like Deep Mind and Causal AI are doing pioneer work to make AI/ML less brittle.”

Scott has extensive career experience in general management, business strategy, marketing, product management and business development. He spent the first half of his career on the commercial side of manufacturing companies, and the second half in management consulting focused on digital strategy and transformation, most recently with Accenture. He is currently the CEO of VioLume, Inc, an early-stage manufacturer in the healthcare space. Scott has an MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and a BA in Economics from Cornell University.

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmcgowan/

“Scott McGowan is a strategist and digital transformer who examines the business case with a high degree of acumen to formulate the plan for the future. When at Acquity Group and then at Accenture, we have worked with more than 5 clients and collaborated on lifting and shifting old processes from brick and mortar to digital. These were during the formative years of Content Management, Ecommerce and Digi9tal Marketing where we had to understand start-ups and their capabilities, do platform selection, and suggest integration modalities between platform like SAP, Oracle, IBM, Adobe, Salesforce and all their acquisitions. Scott is amazing at putting together a structure for Governance and Change Management, and we work great in tandem to design the perfect blueprint for interactions.”

Paddy is the Unilever Chaired Professor of Marketing and the Academic Director of the Emerging Markets Institute at INSEAD. Prior to INSEAD, he was on the business school faculty at Stanford and Washington University. He was also a Visiting Professor at the Wharton School of Business and Kellogg Graduate School of Management. His research has received numerous awards including recognition as one of the Ten Most Influential Papers in Management Science’s First Fifty Years (1954-2004) of publication. He has consulted, served as expert witness, and created Executive Education courses for companies ranging from multinationals (e.g., Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, Anheuser-Busch, Lufthansa, Target, Johnson & Johnson, Syngenta, OCBC, Westpac, etc.) to start-ups (e.g., Engage, Tyfone, Overstone, Eruditus, Mindseed, etc.) across N. America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/papadmanabhan/
https://www.professorpaddy.com/
https://www.phoenixencountermethod.com/
https://www.insead.edu/faculty-research/faculty/v-paddy-padmanabhan

“Dr. Paddy Padmanabhan is my peer from IIT-Varanasi (BHU) and a professor at INSEAD in Singapore who a has an amazing take on pivoting companies to adapt to business changes. This business process looks at dreamers and doers, and proposes a methodology called the Phoenix Encounter that breaks strategy into Groundwork, Battlefield and Breakthrough to define a themed progression for growth and competition. It also proposes that sometimes it is necessary to “burn” current concepts to the ground and take a fresh new approach to business. I have used his three tenets to craft out the strategy for NUMO and also based it on two additional dimensions – the Art of War (Chinese) and the Five Rings (Japanese Samurai). The article on Embracing Disruption summarizes this. Paddy advises us on perfecting the Business Canvas, our purpose, and the extent of digital transformation of where we should be mindful of its shortcomings (squaring the circle) and opportunities in omni-channel. His favorite phrase to define cyber-physical is: the mélange of atoms and bits/bytes.”

Shish is the Global Retail Lead at Microsoft for Startups in Microsoft Corporation. He manages a portfolio of disruptive startups with cutting edge innovations to accelerate the digital transformation of the Retail Industry. ShiSh helps startups scale through the assets & resources available through Microsoft including engineering, sales, and research. ShiSh has been with Microsoft for 24 years and is deeply passionate about solving business problems using Data & AI as a competitive asset. In his spare time, ShiSh dabbles with IoT, Ham Radio and Location Tracking, as well Ocean Navigation.

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/shishs
twitter: http://twitter.com/5h15h

“Shish Shridhar advises us on our relationship with Microsoft and on the changing landscape of retail which is beginning to utilize augmented and mixed reality (AR/XR). This complements several of my prior projects (Kohler, Treasury Wines, Bose etc.) where I helped blueprint marketing strategies for personalization and dynamic experiences. Shish has also introduced me to Microsoft’s CTO for Manufacturing and the Industry Cloud team. We will be working with this team and Azure’s foray in Cloud for Manufacturing. The plan for NUMO is to use Azure APIs, Dynamics, and the Power platform, and create our ecosystem with these foundational entities in combination with synthetic engineering from Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence, PTC, Ansys and others, Open AI, and the Nvidia Omniverse framework. Shish has also introduced us to Microsoft’s fast fashion play wherein the goal is to reduced friction in supply chain by additive manufacturing using micro-factories to create custom garments. I am also working with several startups at mHUB who deal with future textile plays that will also tie into these relationships.  Our article on Connected Commerce is based on our interactions with him and his team and we are working with a VC firm (REFASHIOND) to firm up their thesis to enable supply chain to be balanced and resilient. Refer to our article on Balancing Supply Chain on this. I have known Shish for more than 50 years.”

Arun’s consulting work in leadership has included areas of Organization Leadership, facilitating leaders in Transition, Executive Coaching, equipping leaders with a ‘Coaching Mind-set’, Goal Orientation and Stakeholder management. His approach is one of balancing short-term requirements with long term results, understanding and working with the Cultural Ecosystem, top team development, Diversity and Inclusion and Building Executive Resilience among others. Arun has experience in providing insights for several domains such as media, consultancy, BFSI, Consumer Industrial, Consumer & Government. He is passionate about supporting senior leaders in building coaching mindsets. Arun straddles between working with start-up entrepreneurs and big companies thereby enabling acceptance of youth and post technology mindsets combined with traditional organization strength and stability. Arun is currently involved as a promoter and co-founder of three companies and is a board member in these companies. He is Advisor at Hyperstate- a tech disruptor company that converts messages to experiences. With 30+ years of experience in the communications field- spent in advertising and media, he insists that problems are addressed through building coherent views and finding higher order solutions. He has spearheaded various media houses such as The Hindu, Hindustan Times, Times of India, and Bloomberg UTV. Throughout his career, he has worked with creative teams and journalists creating sustainable value. Arun is category agnostic. Where there is a challenge, he likes to play with possibilities.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arun-anant-9976264/

“Arun Anant, also my peer from IIT-Varanasi (BHU), is our mentor and advisor on Human Capital Management and helps us with mindfulness, equality, and diversity. In general, he helps us walk the correct path as is indicated in the article on The Heart of the Matter. He has a background in advertising and publishing. He is also an advisor at Hyperstate Technologies whose Kappa platform is unique in introspecting dynamic content like videos and enabling interactions using their unique AI based behavior engine. They have had tremendous success with Mercedes, Cannon, and several financial institutions. We are planning to embed Kappa into NUMO’s ecosystem so that we can relate to customer experiences more effectively than traditional marketing and current approaches. Albeit based in Mumbai, Arun and I talk at least 2-3 times a week to touch base on NUMOs progress and what new forces like compliance, privacy and cyber security should be front and center to our formulations. Based on our interactions, I have been certifying myself in Industrial Cyber Security techniques, Advanced Manufacturing and coordinating the progression of our products play with Drexel University to not only make it design for manufacturability, but also for building the right marketing collateral for sell.”

John establishes and advances organizational priorities and financial positioning, delivering sustainable growth while minimizing risks. Forward-thinking and innovative with an innate ability to assess complex situations and find a path through challenges to achieve intended outcomes. Thinks like a shareholder and customer, a mindset critical to growing and retaining business. Excels at building relationships of trust with board members and senior executives, developing global leaders, leading across functions, and influencing business direction. Progressed though C-suite roles of increasing responsibility, consistently having a positive impact on business performance.

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-brazzale/
twitter: http://twitter.com/5h15h

“As we move into our next phase of operations, John will advise us on our interactions with investors, venture capitals, strategic partners and banks, and help ensure that due diligence is accounted on both sides as we negotiate the terms and conditions to appropriate the necessary finances needed to accomplish our goals.”