Our Team is united by experience in the industry, commitment to designing and developing high quality solutions, and dedication to providing superior customer service and user experience. Working with Aura guarantees personal approach with a fast response time and quality work that fits your business backed by years of experience providing solutions.
James Chen has more than 20 years of experience working with associations supporting a variety of end-to-end projects to optimize technology to support their missions. His full solution approach, diverse knowledge, and the ability to deliver proven results is the reason many of Aura’s clients continue to use our services today, many with us from the company’s founding in 2012. James is known for his personalized commitment to nothing less than 100% satisfaction from each client, his extensive knowledge of a wide variety of nonprofit and for-profit business applications, platforms and processes, and his unique ability to tailor services and solutions to best meet organizational and staff goals.
James has performed all software lifecycle roles including project management, business analysis, solution design, testing, and training. His creative, problem-solving approach allows him to see solutions from all angles and perspectives. James has performed change management to improve clients’ productivity while reducing clients’ cost.
James holds some of the highest levels of certifications available for platforms like NetSuite, Aptify, Microsoft Financial and CRM Suites, and Sitefinity. His personal expertise lies in configuring operational areas such as Core Financials (including G/L, A/P, A/R, Billing, Project Costing, Budgeting), Asset Management, eCommerce, and an array of Association Management requirements (including Membership, Dues, Meetings, Trade Shows, and Fundraising).
James holds a B.S. in Management Information Systems and a Masters in Computer Science, with specializations in database systems and software engineering.
Brian Skalinder is our fearless leader for all things NetSuite and engages with clients on every NetSuite implementation or customization project to ensure delivery of high quality service and value to our customers. He has more than 20 years’ experience in the tech and consulting sector across a variety of development, consulting, and management roles. Brian holds NetSuite ERP Consultant certifications and has over 10 years’ experience with NetSuite, including expertise in sales, solution architecture, discovery & requirements, customization design, business process re-engineering, module configuration, 3rd party integrations, data migration, testing, reporting & analytics, and training. Brian applies his depth and breadth of experience to lead our NetSuite consulting team and development resources, align projects and deliverables with our customers' goals and objectives, and focus our joint project teams on customer success.
Nicole Brinck brings more than 15 years of experience in Information Technology managing global project teams and driving organizational objectives. From tech and software giants to startups and interactive digital development agencies, Nicole understands the complexities of collaborative and highly iterative agility. With a background in diverse industries which include technology, government, higher education, insurance, hospitality, health & wellness, & e-commerce, Nicole's expertise lends the fundamentals of organizational and procedural best practices and innovation to the Aura team and the non-profit professional membership suite of clients we support.
Wendy Fumagalli has over 16 years of experience in corporate finance and accounting, with the past 9 years in an executive leadership position.
At her previous company, she was heavily involved in a full accounting software transition, including vendor selection and implementation. Her experience in corporate finance includes all aspects of accounting, including, but not limited to, audit, tax, financial reporting and financial analysis.
She graduated from the University of Illinois with a B.S. in Accountancy and a B.S. Marketing.
At Aura, we use NetSuite to run our business and Natalie is one of our Super Users. Natalie utilizes the full ERP Suite daily to manage and oversee corporate business operations, processes all full-time and contract employee time entry, employs automated workflows to accurately link work to client records and subsequent billing and deliver project cost-accounting to our CFO.
In addition to NetSuite, Natalie is the Product Owner for Aura’s proprietary SaaS platform, The Aura eStore, which delivers eCommerce and online event registration for many of Aura’s association clients across the United States.
Natalie’s role also includes extensive project management, change management and process improvement.
One of our most seasoned team members, Joel Musheno has been working in the tech sector for more than 20 years. Joel uses NetSuite daily for internal projects and tasks and does custom scripting in the system. However, you’ll usually find Joel working on our client’s most complicated projects where he is able to draw on his 20 years of experience building system integrations and more than 15 years of support and development work on both commercial and open-source eCommerce platforms. We’d be remiss not to mention Joel has more than 10 years of association-specific experience, making him a truly exceptional and irreplaceable resource.
We are proud of our long-standing relationships with our clients and the 94% client retention rate. Our customers choose to work with us because of our in-depth knowledge of the industry and related technologies. Having decades of software engineering experience, we continue to learn and grow our technical skillset and stay on top of the latest technical advancements. We work to stay cutting edge while still adhering to solid principles and delivering the high-quality work clients have come to expect.