Ana is a cultural-systems builder working at the intersection of community, design, frontier technology, and human culture. She serves as Chairwoman of 「 yes, 」, a Tokyo-based cultural consultancy and family office operating globally through Tokyo Salone and its constellations, in curation with semi permanent x teenage engineering. Having led innovation across Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Sony, and IDEO, she spends her days building, gathering people, and chasing improbable side quests across culture, technology, and community. Every challenge is another boss monster. Every detour reveals a hidden path. Still exploring the map, building rooms where disciplines meet, and future generations inherit responsibility.

Rachel is an independent design executive and educator who has held influential roles at Meta, The New York Times, GQ, and Godfrey Dadich Partners. Since founding her own practice in 2020, she has collaborated with global organizations (Airbnb) and women-led ventures (Pulse Fund). Operating as a fractional design leader, she unlocks human creativity by embedding deeply with teams navigating the inflection points where brand, culture, and technology converge. A queer advocate dedicated to seeing more women in design leadership, she also teaches, mentors, and champions marginalized voices across the industry.

Evi O. is a designer, artist, and publisher whose work explores the intersection of books, visual culture, and contemporary publishing. Born in Surabaya, Indonesia, and based in Gadigal Country (Sydney, Australia), she founded EOS (Evi-O.Studio), specializing in publication design for cultural institutions, artists, and authors worldwide. Through her independent imprint, formist editions, she creates and publishes books that celebrate art, design, and creative inquiry. Her practice is rooted in a belief that books remain one of our most enduring tools for preserving knowledge, shaping culture, and connecting people across time and place.

Hector is an award-winning industrial designer and educator with over eleven years of teaching at programs including UIC, Notre Dame, RIT, Academy of Art University, and SAIC. Named IDSA's Young Educator of the Year and a recipient of the prestigious Core77 Award, he leads his consultancy H Design and founded the nonprofit Advanced Design, which advances design education at scale. In 2020 he launched Offsite, an innovative online design school bridging academia and industry, which recently expanded internationally with the debut of a new auxiliary program based in Japan.

Matt is the co-founder of the pioneering entertainment localization firm AltJapan Co., Ltd. He co-hosted the popular NHK World television show Japanology Plus from 2015 to 2022. He is the author of the 2020 book Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World. His essays and cultural commentary regularly appear in media outlets including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Business Review, and more.

Ale is the Music Director of KCRW and a longtime force in Los Angeles’ independent music and cultural community. Prior to joining KCRW, he served as Executive Director of dublab, where he helped expand the station into one of the city’s most influential experimental music platforms. A musician, composer, and Emmy Award-winning producer, Cohen has performed with projects including Languis and Pharaohs and has composed music for film and television. His work centers on music discovery, cultural storytelling, and building connections between artists, audiences, and public media.

Dylan is an artist, speaker, and visual effects veteran exploring how tools shape creativity. With over 30 years across animation, games, and design, he has helped artists turn emerging technologies into creative expression. At Pixar, he has worked on RenderMan for every film since Monsters, Inc., championing stylized rendering and artist-driven workflows. He lives in San Francisco and still finds time to doodle monsters.

Jesper is a builder, master carpenter, JDM enthusiast, and founder and CEO of teenage engineering, the Stockholm-based design, culture, and electronics company behind the APC-02, OP-1, Pocket Operator series, field system, and other tools for sound, play, and creative experimentation. Whether shaping wood, restoring cars, or designing instruments, his work is guided by a belief that the best tools invite curiosity, discovery, and delight. Through teenage engineering, he explores the space where craftsmanship, culture, and technology meet, creating objects that encourage experimentation, reward play, and remind us that technology can still feel surprising, human, and magical.

Doug is the founder of Weber Workshops, a globally recognized brand designing high-performance coffee equipment. With a background in engineering and early experience at Apple, he brings a product-first mindset to his work. Operating across Japan, Taiwan, Europe, and the U.S., he focuses on durability, repairability, and material honesty, creating tools built to last decades, not seasons, with transparent supply chains and a commitment to long-term integrity.

UESATSU is a Japanese designer and cultural practitioner whose work explores the relationship between identity, aesthetics, and contemporary life. Through a distinct visual and material language, they examine how objects, environments, and cultural signals shape perception and belonging. Moving between design, storytelling, and cultural inquiry, UESATSU creates work guided by intuition, restraint, and the belief that meaning often resides as much in what is omitted as in what is revealed.

Shinichiro is founder of Landscape Products, and Chief Design Officer of The Conran Shop Japan. Landscape Products a pioneering Japanese design studio working across furniture, interiors, architecture, hospitality, and cultural spaces. Since founding the practice in 1997 and later opening the influential Playmountain in Tokyo, he has helped define a generation of Japanese lifestyle design. Guided by a belief that design begins with how people live, gather, and connect, his work explores the relationship between objects, places, memory, and everyday culture.

Jorge Furuya is Head of Car UX at Volvo Cars, where he leads the global user experience and HMI strategy across its vehicle portfolio. A people-centric product design leader with more than 15 years of experience, he has shaped experiences at Amazon, Samsung, Google, HTC, Sony Ericsson, and IDEO. His work centers on building trust, empowering teams, and designing meaningful technology with dignity, responsibility, and care.

Noah is a designer and sustainability strategist leading Nike's Sustainable Product Design team. The creator of Nike Space Hippie — shoes made almost entirely from trash — he has spent over two decades pursuing a single idea: that great design and responsible design are the same thing. His work spans product, materials, and brand, and his career includes eight years at fuseproject and award-winning work for Herman Miller, Samsung, and Google. He lives in Portland with his family.

Ignacio is an AI Research Lead at NASA Ames Research Center, working on the technologies that will help define the future of exploration. Operating at the intersection of artificial intelligence, autonomy, and complex systems, his work examines how humans and intelligent machines can collaborate in uncertain and rapidly changing environments. From Earth to deep space, Ignacio’s research explores how emerging technologies can augment human potential, support discovery, and unlock new frontiers of possibility.

Akiko is the founder of Faro, the leadership and organizational advisory practice of The Mega Center. A former Co-Country Manager of Maison Margiela Japan and advisor to Nippon Partners, she brings firsthand operating experience to leadership, culture, and organizational transformation. Through her Sentient Leadership methodology, she helps organizations build the capacity, clarity, and alignment needed to navigate growth and complexity. Her clients include Microsoft, Figma, IDEO, Barclays, Kyriba, and Tekoma Energy. Raised in Texas, shaped by New York and Paris, and built in Tokyo, she works across Japan, Asia, and global headquarters.

Justin is a chef, creator, entrepreneur, and founder of Repertoire. After training at The Culinary Institute of America, he spent nearly a decade in some of the world’s most demanding kitchens, including The French Laundry and Lysverket, ultimately serving as Executive Sous Chef. Today, through Repertoire, his writing, podcasting, education, and advisory work help hospitality teams build stronger cultures and better systems for performance.

Ryo is a contemporary chef shaped by a journey across Japan and Europe. After training in Tokyo, he spent two years at Kyoto’s monk, learning to translate landscape into cuisine under Yoshihiro Imai. He later worked at Kadeau and served as a department chef at Noma (2022–2025), deepening his understanding of “time and place.” Now back in Japan, he is building Jørn, a Japan-to-Nordics culinary dialogue expressing Japanese essence through stillness, clarity, and purity.

Jesús Durón refined his craft across Europe before joining Pujol in Mexico City, where he helped shape the evolution of contemporary cuisine and contributed to its Michelin-star recognition. From the Basque Country to the Mediterranean coast, and later at La Marine under Alexandre Couillon, he developed a way of working grounded in seasonality, seafood, and vegetables. Today, in Tokyo, his life project MASA explores microseasonality as a dialogue between Mexico and Japan, shaped by time, place, memory, and roots. Beyond Japan, the work continues through different landscapes and communities, guided by the same intent.

Lucho is a Mexico City-based chef whose work explores the relationship between memory, place, and contemporary Mexican cuisine. Through his restaurant EM, he has developed a highly personal culinary language rooted in seasonality, intuition, and continual refinement. His cooking draws from landscape, culture, and lived experience, creating thoughtful expressions of identity, emotion, and time through food.

Pablo Soto is Head Chef at Noma. His work focuses on what high performance teams need to do their best work when time is short, conditions change, and the stakes are high. He is developing a practical system for leading, developing, and evaluating people in intense creative environments, built for moments when there is no time for long explanations and shared language matters more than long instructions. He believes care without standards becomes softness, and standards without care becomes fear.

Christopher is a Norwegian chef and founder of Lysverket, a restaurant shaped by the landscapes and coastal traditions of Western Norway. His work explores how ecology, seasonality, and local food systems can inform contemporary cuisine. Guided by a deep respect for producers, ingredients, and place, he creates experiences that connect people to landscape, culture, and the rhythms of the natural world.

Alberto Landgraf is a Brazilian chef and the chef-owner of Oteque, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Rio de Janeiro. His work is defined by technical rigor, consistency, and a strong focus on seasonality and product quality. With experience in leading international kitchens, Landgraf has developed a disciplined culinary approach that prioritizes clarity and balance. At Oteque, he delivers a contemporary dining experience rooted in precision and respect for ingredients. The restaurant has received international recognition and is consistently ranked among the leading dining destinations in the world.

Dr. Vaughn Tan is a strategy consultant and author whose work connects food, AI tools, and uncertainty. His book The Uncertainty Mindset (Columbia Univ. Press, 2020) grew out of from years embedded with elite culinary R&D teams, studying how they innovate by using uncertainty. He now runs Tangent, an Asia-focused AI applications incubator, and co-founded Poietic PBC, which builds AI-native tools for human-machine organizations. He sits on the board of Rethink Food and is a fellow at the Singapore Government's Centre for Strategic Futures.

Eneko is a scientist, researcher, and food innovator exploring how science can help shape the future of nourishment. Working across sustainability, human health, microbiology, and food systems, he connects scientific discovery with culinary practice to better understand how we grow, prepare, and experience food. His work brings together chefs, researchers, and institutions to explore new possibilities for feeding both people and planet.