Ray Lo

Wrapping up a great week at Coronado Naval Base in San Diego w NASCAR. A lot of our work in the built environment takes years to come together. This was the opposite. An entire race track and festival stood up in weeks on an active military base, with a level of speed and coordination you rarely see. It was a chance to run our pilots live with some great partners and build experience strategy learnings we carry forward to every venue. It was also an honor to be part of the Navy's 250th birthday. On a personal note, after his service, my grandfather spent his entire career at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and I grew up listening to the pride he took in building equipment to protect this country. Being around such driven people this week, brought that full circle.

“I have never had imposter syndrome in my life.” ​When Oprah Winfrey shared this at the Amazon Leadership Summit during Cannes Lions this year, it immediately cut through the noise for me. ​Afterward, I had the unbelievable privilege of connecting with her. When I shared just how much her perspective struck a chord with me, she paused, looked right at me with both passion and empathy: she insisted that I remember it, and carry that same unwavering confidence forward. ​It’s a message that feels especially relevant right now. This week, we are celebrating a massive milestone with the announcement of Amazon and Wondery's multi-year partnership to expand The Oprah Podcast. Seeing an icon of her stature continue to innovate, lead with intention, and scale her voice across the Amazon ecosystem is a masterclass in executive vision. ​Surrounding yourself with the best and brightest minds in the business this week has been deeply inspiring. My ultimate takeaway isn't just a new strategic framework or a groundbreaking partnership. It's a personal reminder from one of the world's greatest leaders: ​Own your space. Trust your voice. There is no room for self-doubt when you are operating in your purpose. ​A massive thank you to our incredible marketing and events teams for bringing the Amazon Leadership Summit to life and making moments like this possible. You and your team's hard work behind the scenes is what truly drives impact here (Cara Solomon❤️). ​Thank you, Oprah, for an unforgettable conversation and for constantly raising the bar. 🚀 ​#CannesLions2026 #Leadership #ExecutivePresence #AmazonAds #Wondery #MarketingAndAdvertising #Oprah #Day1

I've been sitting with a question lately: What does it actually mean to be a design leader in this moment in time? Not just moving fast, but leading well. There's a trap in how many teams are responding to AI. When you treat it as a tooling decision rather than a leadership one, you hand people capability without a quality bar. Suddenly anyone can produce solutions that look credible. Output goes up, and with it, a false sense of momentum. But volume isn't discernment, and the appearance of credibility isn't the same as the real thing. If nobody is making the harder calls about what the work means, what it's for, or whether it's right for your customer, that gap doesn't disappear. It just gets harder to see. I've seen this from both sides. When major shifts hit, the leaders who struggled were often excellent at the craft. What tripped them up was confusing presence with impact. I've been in rooms where I had the data, the relationships, and the floor and still didn't move the conversation forward. Looking back, I was approaching it as a systems problem while everyone else was in triage mode. Those are different conversations. The way through it was learning to speak triage while thinking systemically. Meet the room where it is, then earn the right to move it. What I've noticed now is that AI is being treated in a similar way: as triage, a fix for immediate pressure. The harder questions: are we building the right thing? For the right reasons? And what does that mean for how we work? These aren't always being asked yet. Those are the conversations worth having. And what design leadership specifically brings to them is the through-line: the coherence across an experience that makes a product feel like one thing, not a collection of decisions made by different people at different times. And when those conversations do happen, when leaders earn the right to move the room, that's historically where new possibilities emerge. Not despite the disruption, but because of how people chose to lead through it. The industrial revolution mechanized labor and created professions nobody had imagined. The internet made digital experience impossible to ignore, and UX moved from the margins to the mainstream. Mobile reshaped how we think about context, access, and attention. Every major shift looks disruptive while it's happening. Most of them also open doors that weren't there before. That's what's available now. AI isn't replacing design judgment. It's making the absence of it impossible to hide. The design leaders who stay discerning, who speak the language of the business without losing the customer, and who are honest about what the work costs and what it creates, won't just survive this shift. They'll help define what comes next. We've done this before. We'll do it again.

Happy Pride! Since 2018, we’ve celebrated Pride across our games, and across Riot. In-game, our collection of ways to express yourself with emotes, icons, titles, and more grows larger every year. At Riot, Rainbow Rioters, our ERG for LGBTQIA+ Rioters and allies, and our D&I team will help Rioters around the world celebrate by raising money for charity through March for Pride and creating spaces for LGBTQIA+ Rioters and allies to come together at events like drag bingo, a Pride-themed Night market, and Karaoke, just to name a few. Learn more: https://riot.com/3REEbJV

"Japan is finished." Almost 20 years ago, I saw a post from an American friend of mine online. It wasn't directed at me at all, but I took it personally. As a Japanese citizen living in New York City, it stung. It took some time for me to cool down but I had to admit that he had a point. Over time, I made “Make Japan Matter” one of my missions in life. Two decades later, through I&CO I advise leaders such as Mr. Tadashi Yanai (Fast Retailing/UNIQLO), Mr. Yasuhito Hirota (ASICS), Mr. Daisuke Toyoda (Woven by Toyota), and others, helping them imagine and build what’s next for their brands. I, as an individual, may not be able to change the entire future of my home country. But I can at least contribute to it in some way by helping the leaders of leading organizations imagine and create their respective futures in and outside of Japan. That was the genesis of my first book, “𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗴𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁.” It’s officially being published as of May 19, 2026. Since it’s in Japanese, I’m publishing the content in English through my newsletter Intersection. If you are interested in the topic of brand building and business growth, please subscribe to the newsletter. Link in Comments↓ Thanks to all who helped bring this to life: Sayaka Inamoto I&CO Ayako Koganemaru Alisa Kubota Hiroki Saito of Toyo Keizai Rem Reynolds Mariko Kondo Takashi Mazawa Norikuni Takamiya Hisa Kizu Daiki Kanayama Hisako Konagaya Takayuki Nagai Anna Kowalak Yi Pan Sarah Bernstein Nathalie T. Sheena Livingston Sai Ying (Sandy) Wang... and many others that I'm forgetting 🙏

🎉 My talk on cross-cultural game UX design from the Game UX Summit '25 in Belgium is now live! 🎉 I covered five UX divergences shaped by culture that I've seen often across projects, how we resolved them under development constraints, and why cross-cultural collaboration is harder (and more fixable) than many expect. All shown through case studies from Where Winds Meet, Marvel Rivals, and Destiny Rising. One quick example: the main menu for Where Winds Meet was originally built for a Chinese audience comfortable with feature-rich, high-density interfaces. This would have been overwhelming for many Western players. We pushed for a more minimalist structure with improved hierarchy, ran card sorting exercises, reduced redundant entry points, and managed to get changes in under production constraints. If you're designing for global audiences or working across China and the West, it should be a useful watch. Happy to chat about any questions! https://lnkd.in/eyfCtUzE

10 years ago this week (February 1, 2016), my business partner, Rem Reynolds, and I officially launched I&CO. In my 30’s, I spent years asking successful founders I knew this question: "How did you do it?" The answers shaped how I built I&CO. I'm forever grateful to all my friends who patiently gave me the time for advice. Too many to list, and I list some of you and what you told me here. I now know all of them to be true. Here are the 7 laws I wish I'd known earlier: 𝟭. 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗮 𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿.  You need ONE of three things: the right partner, seed money, or a clear idea. You won't get all three. Stop waiting. —PJ Pereira of Pereira O'Dell 𝟮. 𝗕𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗶𝗰.  Save money. Shed your ego. Take freelance work if needed. Do the math: don't spend more than you earn. —Glenn Cole of 72andSunny 𝟯. 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱.  People hire you, not just your work. Your voice and point of view matter more than follower counts. —Brett Lovelady of Astro Studios | Part of PA Consulting 𝟰. 𝗛𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲.  Our first hire was Nathalie Torres. She taught me empathy I didn't know I lacked. Diversity isn't just right. It makes us better. —Cindy Gallop of MakeLoveNotPorn 𝟱. 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗮𝗰𝗵.  Legal threats. Layoffs. COVID. The hits will come. Experience helps, but nothing fully prepares you. You won't be ready. That's why you need the stomach to take it. —Paul Lavoie of TAXI 𝟲. 𝗧𝘄𝗼 𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹.  Starting a company is like marriage. Two partners, shared vision, clear decision-making. Most importantly, be able to disagree without hating each other. Did I say "marriage?" 𝟳. 𝗡𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴.  What got you here won't get you through the next decade. AI didn't create this reality. It just accelerated it. The half-life of relevance keeps shrinking. I felt completely inadequate in my 20s to start one. Not enough experience, network, money, or recognition. I waited until my late 30s. By then, I'd seen stomach-sinking situations, learned to manage finances, and found the right partner. Starting later gave me something youth couldn't: perspective. To anyone thinking about taking the leap, you don't need all the answers. You need one trigger and the willingness to evolve. Anyone who started something, what would be your advice? ----- Special thanks to those who've been on this ship since Day 1: - Rem Reynolds: Without being sentimental, I will tell you I couldn't have done this without you. - Nathalie T.: You are the sister that I never had AND that I didn't know I needed. - Will Turnage: Good seeing you last month, you are forever one of us. And of course, thanks to everyone at I&CO. Let's keep up the good fight. Read more on this topic and relevance at the intersection of brand, business, and tech in my weekly newsletter, The Intersection: https://lnkd.in/gx8bF6-4 Notes on photos in comments↓