An investment in your employee's health, happiness, wellness, resilience, wellbeing, and lifelong learning can transform your organization’s destiny.
The Kokoro Heart-Mind Product
An investment in your employee’s health, happiness, and resilience—the capacity to turn risk and adversity to advantage—can shape your organization’s destiny.
Kokoro begins with a Resilience Survey conducted by your Directors of Human Resources and Operations. The data in the Survey provides key insights for an Assessment, Diagnosis, and a Practical Action Plan. Effective implementation then delivers measurable solutions to employee disengagement and consequent losses in productivity. The Kokoro process involves interactive conversations prompted and guided by Kokoro’s proprietary AI algorithms, wisdom sources (instantly on demand) and integral resilience methodologies. In 2025-2206 our central focus is on women led enterprises of 2500-5000 employees.
Kokoro is a uniquely positioned Core Competency Training and Productivity Support product provided as a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) with cyber-secure training apps, coaching apps, workflow tools, AI-enabled team collaboration tools, and metrics. Kokoro accomplishes critical productivity outcomes by integrating 25 unique core organizational competencies in a holistic system which produces the singular effect that an increase in productivity of any one of these elements immediately increases the productivity of all the others.
This Compounding Multiplier Effect can be tracked, measured, and valued, using Kokoro’s proprietary analytics, and at every level—personal, organizational, and community—producing continuous and synergistic ROI and SROI (Social ROI).
The urgent and complex challenges of the 21st century cannot be met effectively by leaders who are unable to free themselves from 20th century vertically siloed, command-and-control thinking, which divorces the discerning wisdom of the heart from the intelligent genius of our creative minds. The times cry for a new evidence-based model that effectively brings the two together. Kokoro fills this void.
A Unified Product Platform for Organizational Transformation
Strategic Leverage: The Power of Cohorts
Implementing cohort-based leadership development programs has proven effective in fostering organizational change and delivering measurable returns on investment (ROI) and social return on investment (SROI). Notable examples include: American Express Leadership Academy, Marriott International’s ‘En Route’ Program, CPP Investments’ INSPIRE and LEAD Programs, and Norwegian American Hospital’s Professional Leadership Training (PLT) Program.
Kokoro aims to enhance productivity significantly and measurably by first building 25 core competencies in cohorts, and then using the Kokoro AI system to accelerate these skills and learning throughout the organization
Why Will Kokoro Work?
The Leadership Team
Julian Gresser
CEO
Cofounder, board member, international environmental public interest lawyer, Japan expert, inventor, professional negotiator, and author
William Moulton
CTO
Cofounder, board member, AI technologist, cyber-security expert, learning management systems designer, technology systems architect
Mariangela Ferrara
CMO
Business Development Officer at CoCreateX Inc. helps people and teams with projects, connecting in a distributed social networks.
Patricia Bader-Johnston
VP Business Dev
MBA, Dir. of Women Leaders Project, Former board member for IBM Japan, former VP Operations Finance and Resources for Goldman Sachs Japan
Ben Levi
CIO/CFO
Information systems, finance management, alliance integrator, trainer, and systems design
- CEO Julian Gresser’s track record in training organizational leaders in his unique Resilient Negotiation, Strategic Alliance, and Leadership based wisdom expert system (see partial list of clients and organizations participating in training programs below), and 40 years of JG’s ongoing personal training with grandmasters in Zen, martial arts, qigong, law, and scientists on the new frontiers of behavioral science, specifically psychophysiological self-regulation.
- CTO William Moulton’s 30+ years of professional experience as a designer of AI and machine learning systems, and current successful demonstration and market acceptance of AI voice recognition science educational products, human core competency expertise in intelligent robotic control systems for space applications, are part of the foundation for the Kokoro platform.
- CIO’s Ben Levi’s longtime background in training, education and workflow optimization bring expertise in customizing Kokoro solution to client unique needs, and encompasses whole systems, whole person productivity, and collaborative teamwork.
- Patrica Bader-Johnston is uniquely qualified to captain the Kokoro Global Women’s Leadership Initiative. She is one of world’s leading woman entrepreneurs and social innovators in the Regenerative Economy, and has worked in business leadership positions in Japan for over 30 years.
Focus on Cohorts
The relationship of cohorts to increasing productivity is well established. Kokoro provides a fast track to improving productivity and social impact with estimated gains as high as 10-20% within 6 months of engagement by employee team cohorts.
Continuous Productivity Gains
Kokoro is dedicated to the continuous quality improvement and organizational productivity under the philosophy of Kaizen. Kokoro rapidly identifies errors in productivity to improve performance.
Science of the Heart
Research conducted over 30 years by HeartMath Institute confirms that the human heart is far more than an efficient pump that sustains life. The heart is an access point for wisdom and intelligence that supports dynamic balance, enhanced creativity, and core competencies essential to the Compounding Multiplier for Personal Development, Resilient Organizations, and Communities.
Ethical AI
Kokoro’s singular focus in design and implementation of ethical AI offers a clear differentiation in the market. We build upon the work of major providers in the areas of privacy, transparency, and the removal of toxicity and bias. Kokoro AI encodes the genome of the world’s wisdom traditions and applies this vital resource to organizational productivity challenges, and producing prosocial outcomes, using the algorithm of Integral Resilience as a Rosetta Stone of human behavior.
Dynamic Balance
Within a tumultuous changing world, an essential missing behavioral competency, highlighted in Kokoro, is dynamic balance—the ability to adapt with agility while guided by wisdom, resilience, and integrity. This is no longer a matter of preference. Balance is critical to the survival of business and civilization.
Metrics
Kokoro combines well established engagement metrics with our own proprietary measurement for wisdom, integral resilience, and other qualitative factors. These are displayed in both graphical and quantitative form for clients to track their improvement. We work with organizations to accurately map the outcomes to their existing KPIs for productivity.
7 Critical Challenges for Resilient Organizations
How to build an organizational culture that prioritizes wisdom and resilience?
—Embed Kokoro (Heart/Mind) as a unique strategic cultural asset, linking resilience, wisdom, employee happiness, health and wellness to high productivity gains.
How to translate organizational culture into resilient operations?
—Cultivate core competencies within cohorts with simple, easily grasped practices and protocols of engagement that can be tracked and measured and expressed in productivity gains.. Cohorts will then rapidly transmit this learning throughout the organization.
How to retain dedicated and talented employees?
—Invest in your people—not only in “upskilling” but also give them and their families the core competencies to thrive in an uncertain tumultuous world. Help them realize their “soul” work—their talents, hopes, and dreams through their jobs. Teach them invaluable life skills and reward them for teaching others.
How to get ESG to ROI?
—Apply Kokoro’s collaborative innovation methodologies to engineering breakthroughs, then helping you commercialize them.
How to deploy Kokoro AI as a unique assistant in engaging employees?
—Use Kokoro to unleash the highest and noblest life potential in your employees, by successfully tackling major challenges of your organization.
How to apply wisdom and resilience to make strategic decisions around risk?
—Recognize that the wiser and more “integrally resilient,” the more courageous your organization will become in facing reality, accurately evaluating risks, and taking action…you will dare to capture opportunities waiting inside Uncertainty.
How to build market share in the emerging Regenerative-Circular Economy?
—Continuously apply (and master) the customized applications of the Kokoro system for this globally urgent challenge.
Compounding Productivity Multiplier Effect:
Kokoro’s integrated AI-supported system of core competency training produces the singular effect that an increase in productivity of any one of these elements immediately increases the productivity of all the others. This Compounding Multiplier Effect can be tracked, measured, and valued, using Kokoro’s proprietary analytics, and at every level—personal, organizational, and community—producing continuous and synergistic ROI and SROI.
Using Kokoro AI, we can also track, measure, and value the synergistic effect of how ROI can drive SROI, which in turn generates a positive and continuous feedback loop for enhanced ROI, especially as other cohorts join and benefit from the process.
TURNING KNOWLEDGE INTO ACTION:
The Kaizen Roadmap
The above is a natural sequence for onboarding Kokoro, where each step following business logic leads to another, culminating in delivering our goal of enhanced measurable Productivity.
INNOVATION BREAKTHROUGH:
Tracking, Measuring, and Valuing Outcomes
After establishing a cohort and producing Integral Resilience Baseline, Kokoro offers a unique way to track, measure, and value enhanced employee engagement, which as Gallup’s research confirms, translates directly into measurable gains for individual members and the cohort as a whole in increasing Productivity and other KPIs.
EASY ONBOARDING:
Simple, Relevant, Practical
Inspiring and retaining talented and dedicated employees is a primary goal of Kokoro for Organizations. We are offering Kokoro—The Personal Wisdom App for free as part of our engagement.
Right from the start this action enables our organization clients to send a signal to their employees that their employer really cares about their health, safety, and wellbeing and is prepared to invest in their and their family’s future by making available a life-changing breakthrough innovation—Kokoro.
Julian Gresser Endorsements
“The emphasis throughout Piloting Through Chaos is on negotiation, but the analysis and wisdom go well beyond that now available in the literature. This volume is a breakthrough in the use of words, thought processes and managing behavior responsibly.”
– Oliver Oldman, Learned Hand Professor (Emeritus), Harvard Law School
“Julian Gresser assesses some of the fundamental aspects of human behavior. Any negotiator, however experienced, will find new insights in this book.”
– Peter Price, Honorary Member of the European Parliament
"One portfolio company had been mired in negotiations with a foreign company for over a year. In one day’s training, they put together a new plan and team, and three months later closed an OEM agreement worth millions.”
– Dr. Chuck K. Chan, General Partner, Alpine Technology Ventures
"IPOs in China and Japan, inventions in clean energy, decoding Japanese negotiation strategies, incubators for creativity and innovation, the role of beauty in discovery and bringing ideas to market—Julian Gresser is a Renaissance man with an amazing array of achievements and gifts."
– John Tarrant, Zen master, author, Bring Me the Rhinoceros and other works
"Gresser is an international attorney, but also a 21st Century Renaissance Man, with a lifetime of experience in business, music, martial arts, invention, and meditation."
– Kenneth Cohen, author of The Way of Qigong and Honoring the Medicine
"Julian Gresser’s work shows with insight, style and imagination how integrity, that most fundamental of human virtues, continues to be vital to success, and even survival, in the ongoing negotiation of life in our rapidly changing world. The added value in Piloting Through Chaos is the author’s suggestions on how integrity can be cultivated by conscious thought and action, and on how core integrity can affect outcomes in a variety of contexts."
– Peter L. Murray, Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
“The market is flooded with books and tapes about negotiating, but no one, until now, offers insight into the underlying essence of our interpersonal abilities. This fresh approach, if followed, can be transforming for us as individuals, and as a nation.”
– Claudine Schneider, Former U.S. Congresswoman
“Julian is 100% invested in teaching; an active listener; dedicated to ensuring that the class learns; he is high in energy and empathetic. What would my comments be to future participants? Exciting; out-of-the-box; has life application; fundamental to all relationships.”
– Bobbie Busha, Manager, BellSouth
“We need a cultural revolution as transformative as were the scientific and industrial revolutions. If human culture is to survive without unacceptable impacts on the planetary environment, we must live differently as a culture. This means that the arts and humanities are on the front lines of collaborating with scientists and engineers, we need a 'second renaissance.' Julian Gresser, in the second edition of “Piloting through Chaos,” presents a sharply focused methodology for attacking some of the urgent problems and seizing the new opportunities.”
– Roger Malina, Editor, Leonardo
“Julian Gresser is one of those rarest of teachers. He embodies the wisdom that he shares. His pioneering work in negotiation is a quantum leap in human understanding and will move people to their highest level of truth and accomplishment. The value is incalculable, not only to individuals, but to our society.”
– Michael Fitzgerald, Former Director, Washington State Department of Trade & Economic Development
“There is widespread agreement that leadership at any level and in any area requires integrity in the person, the practice, and the profession. It is also clear that this is no easy, simple task, nor can it remain at the mercy of luck, sentimental or institutional formation. Julian Gresser - lawyer, scholar, martial artist, and street-smart practitioner - now makes available the teaching and achievement of integrity in its integral form. As a foundation president, former commissioner, ambassador, and university president, I have had occasion to enlist Julian’s remarkable system and energies. He/it is a godsend for our troubled times and leaders.”
– Dr. Glen A. Olds, U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO
Team Past Clients
Julian Gresser
International Attorney, Professional Negotiator, Social Innovator
Julian Gresser is an international attorney, social entrepreneur, professional negotiator, inventor, and recognized expert on Japan.
As a negotiator his most dramatic success involved helping a San Francisco-based trading company transform its $8 million after-tax branch into a $1 billion Japanese company in seven years. This transaction originated by Julian Gresser and his colleague, Professor James E. Schrager, has come to be called “Going Public Japanese Style” adopting the title of an article they jointly authored in the Wall Street Journal.
From 1976-1983 he was twice Visiting Mitsubishi Professor at the Harvard Law School and also taught courses as a Visiting Professor at MIT on the legal issues of strategic industries. He has been a Visiting Professor at Beijing University, where he taught seminars on Japanese and U.S. environmental law, and also helped the Chinese environmental authorities draft China’s Marine Pollution Control Law.
In 1981 Julian Gresser co-founded The Pacific Law Group, with offices in Los Angeles and Tokyo, in partnership with another American expert on Japanese law, the former CEO of the Bank of Tokyo, and the former Director of the Tax Bureau of the Ministry of Finance.
Julian has served as legal and business advisor to numerous U.S., Japanese, and European companies on a wide array of business issues, including joint ventures, limited (venture capital) partnerships, technology licensing, export controls and customs fraud, antitrust, and intellectual property protection, particularly patent infringement disputes. He has been a senior consultant to the U.S. State Department, The World Bank, The Prime Minister’s Office of Japan, The People’s Republic of China, and the European Commission (where he trained the Commission’s Japanese negotiating teams). He is the author of eight books in English and Japanese, including most recently two online “living” books and a new series of online courses based on the algorithm of Integral Resilience.
His Kokoro apps and his course on Community Resilience synthesizes his discoveries, inventions, and innovations over the past 40 years, based on training with grandmasters in many fields, and his current practice as an international, public interest, environmental lawyer.