Our People
James Burnes is founder and a Managing Partner for Project Brilliant. His leadership and vision help organizations embrace new and emerging technologies to transform their organization to succeed in our highly connected, 24/7 economy. He is also founder and CEO of PatentStatus, a cloud-hosted software start-up in the intellectual property law industry.
For the past 12 years, James has provided thought leadership and consulting to a variety of private and non-profit organizations to embrace new and emerging technologies to succeed in our highly connected, 24/7 economy. His expertise in business development, innovation, product development, and technology has enabled him to work on a variety of exciting ventures and to build a successful consulting practice to innovation-driven clients.
In addition to being an entrepreneur, James is on the advisory board of the State of Indiana’s Economic Development Corporation’s Small Business Development Center (SIBDC) and serves on the Board of Directors for the Central Indiana Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
Aaron Kopel is a Managing Partner at Project Brilliant. As a speaker, mentor, and consultant he is focused on enabling clients to become more responsive to change through the use of Innovation Games, and the implementation of Agile Business principles and Lean-Startup methods across their organizations.
Prior to joining Project Brilliant Aaron led two tech-startups, winning several awards for innovation and entrepreneurship, and spent 10 years in IT and Business consulting. His entrepreneurial background and wide range of consulting experience across large and mid-size organizations ranging from 50- 85,000 people has given him a unique perspective on how organizations innovate and adapt.
Mr. Kopel holds an MBA from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, a BA (double major – Business and Computer Information Systems) from Wartburg College, is a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Professional Scrum Master (PSM), Project Management Professional (PMP), and Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP).
