Ken Sugimura

Ken leads the FP&A function at Highwire, with 15 years of FP&A and strategy experience in both the aerospace and entertainment sectors.

5 questions with Highwire's Director, FP&A

This west coast-turned-east coast FP&A guru loves driving innovation through rigorous analysis and process improvement.

What’s the one thing you really enjoy doing?

I love working with smart people and developing innovative solutions to sticky problems. There is something exciting about the rapid-fire exchange of ideas that energizes me.

What did you do prior to Highwire?

I spent the first half of my career helping people far smarter than I send things into space at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Watching one of those missions land on another planet really drove home that impossible is really just a word. After getting my MBA, I was bitten by the entertainment bug, helping Netflix set up their studio, providing finance and strategy guidance to Variety and Deadline, and figuring out how to manage the busiest concert calendar in the history of the music industry at Live Nation.

What I’m doing when I’m not working…

Spending time with my family. My little girl (who just turned 2 at the time of writing this) is my whole world and I love watching her figure out who she is and experience new things. We just moved across the country last year so we’re exploring all that our new state (NC) has to offer - boating, hiking, museums, and the bathtub that is the Atlantic Ocean (real oceans are cold).

Where are you from?

Los Angeles, born and raised

What do you miss about where you’re from?

The food. I only dabbled in being a foodie, but let’s just say my little town of 5,000 doesn’t quite have the same variety as LA did. On the flipside, no traffic, sooo…

Where the rubber meets the road

Everyone at Highwire is hands-on with client work and the principals are no exception. Some of the brands Kathleen has worked with.

150+ thinkers and doers

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