ADVISORY
Executive Counsel / Advisory / CXO
Thinking and acting alongside leadership.
A counsel service for CEOs and executives. Before the decisions that matter: questioning assumptions, reading the timing, framing the long view. Standing beside leadership as one presence where practice and knowledge meet.
Tenkai, counsel to the Tokugawa shoguns, was a monk who shaped the strategy and governance of the shogunate. Astronomy, calendrics, geomancy, cosmology — he brought the liberal arts of his era to bear on everything from the architecture of power to the physical design of Edo. Japan has an archetype for putting the liberal arts to work in governance and management.
The future cannot be predicted.
But the quality of your vision can be refined.
This is where the worldview of It's a Random World connects. Perception over prediction. Judgment within the flow, rather than the illusion of control. That is what this role carries, at leadership's side.
FORM
Three ways of walking alongside.
Executive Counsel.
A thinking partner for the CEO or executive as an individual. Regular sessions, conversations at inflection points, asynchronous exchange in between. Before major decisions, we question assumptions, read the timing, and frame the long view together. There is no fixed agenda. Whatever is on your mind becomes the agenda.
Advisory.
Standing beside the management team or the board. New ventures, AI strategy, business transformation — sustained engagement with a defined management theme, from an outside vantage point. Outside, but not at arm's length: from strategy formulation to working documents, the support is hands-on.
CXO.
Deeper inside the organization, as part of the team. Driving new ventures or transformation, carrying day-to-day execution. Board-level and CXO experience, applied at ground level, turning vision into working form.
The depth of engagement differs. The substance does not: raising the quality of the questions, and the quality of the judgment.
01
As in-house philosopher.
Organizations around the world have begun bringing philosophers inside. In 2026, Google DeepMind hired a philosopher under that formal title. At the frontier of AI, companies face questions technology alone cannot answer — what counts as a good decision, what should be built, and what should not.
None of this is new. Aristotle taught Alexander; Tenkai stood beside three generations of Tokugawa shoguns. Placing knowledge at the center of power is the oldest use of the liberal arts, East and West. Philosophy here is not a body of doctrine but a discipline: the craft of questioning assumptions. Logic, rhetoric, ethics — the core of the arts of the free.
Gaia United has cultivated this discipline through both study and practice. Cognitive science, Eastern and Western thought, embodied disciplines of mind. And twenty years in the field, asking "is that assumption actually true?" inside live businesses. The standard we hold ourselves to: knowledge that works on the ground, not on paper.
In concrete terms:
Stress-testing the decision framework itself before a major investment. Surfacing unspoken assumptions in a new-venture debate. Framing the question "what should remain beyond efficiency?" when AI enters the organization. The decisions belong to leadership. We raise the quality of the questions that precede them.
02
As futurist.
Futures work, too, is an established profession. Intel, P&G, and Ford have kept futurists on staff; the prototype is Shell in the 1970s. Shell did not predict the oil crisis — it had prepared multiple futures as scenarios, and so it moved first. Not the accuracy of prediction, but the readiness of perception. That is the essence of corporate futures work.
And this, too, is the work of the liberal arts. Reading patterns of change from history. Tracing the lineage of technology — the way the binary logic of the I Ching passed through Leibniz on its way to the computer. The seeds of the future are always found in the past. Sensing, through literature and anthropology, the human shifts that have not yet become numbers. Thinking about the future is the liberal arts in full mobilization.
Gaia United's foundation is frontline experience in AI, FinTech, and emerging technology, layered with learning that crosses disciplines. We read technological change as lineage, not as fashion.
In concrete terms:
Mapping how AI could reshape your business structure on a five- and ten-year horizon. Translating the large shifts — technology, geopolitics, generational values — into what they mean for your company. Challenging the assumptions behind the mid-term plan from the outside. No manufactured predictions. We raise the quality of your readiness.
Yours to have, without the hire.
An in-house philosopher and a futurist both shape the quality of executive judgment. Few companies can justify hiring for either role alone. So we made it three forms of engagement: as counsel, as advisor, or as CXO. The philosopher's questions, the futurist's field of view, and twenty years of practice — held at whatever depth you need.
EXPERIENCE
01
Built a SaaS to No.1 market share.
As Director and COO, built an online customer engagement SaaS from zero to the top market share in Japan (Fuji Keizai, 2022). Development, sales, customer success, and alliances run as one — the full anatomy of a business, known firsthand.
02
Brought global companies into Japan.
From unicorn startups to the Fortune 500, supported market entry into Japan. From proposal and contract negotiation through systems integration and operational launch — three major partnerships carried through to execution.
03
Built new ventures, AI among them.
AI product development, FinTech insurance, business transformation. Not vision decks but working businesses: from requirements definition through launch, zero to one, again and again.
04
And today, as executive counsel.
Standing beside leadership at a listed company and an AI startup. As a close counsel to the CEO — from decisions that matter to the push behind new ventures and AI adoption, engaged wherever the management question leads.
It begins with a conversation.