Alumni Profile: Taiga Kunii

Taiga is a recent graduate from the Contemporary Writing and Production department at Berklee. For the first several years he focused on music, however, as time passed he realized he wanted to launch his own company. Aware that he lacked substantial knowledge in business, he became involved with BerkleeICE and was able to take part in several exciting opportunities including a trip to New York City and most importantly, attending the European Innovation Academy (EIA) Portugal 2017. The program which lasts 3 weeks, was meant to mimic the process that an entrepreneur would typically go through when launching their business from customer development and prototype to launch.

Taiga’s team was paired up with other students with experience in business, software development, marketing and design; yet he felt that his biggest challenge was learning how to manage a team, working with them as individuals in order to ensure great team dynamic. Taiga’s biggest lesson from EIA Portugal was the importance of teamwork, a lesson which he is now applying to his career as a freelancer. 

Now that he is done with Berklee, Taiga has moved to LA and is focusing on growing his freelancing business. During this time he has sought incredible job experience such as a video shoot in Chicago, a photo shoot in Malaysia and several performances in LA. In addition to this he has become the manager to Naoto Inti Raymi, a well known Japanese artist. With this incredible travel and work schedule, he decided it was time to put a team together knowing that the quality and efficiency of his work would significantly increase.

Taiga is a great example of a Berklee graduate who is a musician but has become a businessman and deals with this relationship every day. Ultimately he hopes to create a bridge between the entertainment industries in Japan and LA, much like he has done with his music and business careers. “Entrepreneurship didn’t take hold of me until my last few semesters at Berklee, but it has had the most lasting impact. Learning music theory and skills is not enough to have a successful career, we must learn from entrepreneurs to take action and stand up after countless failures. I hope every student at Berklee can have some relationship to BerkleeICE, I greatly appreciate all the lessons and opportunities they provided me” he says. 

Now Taiga is pursuing work opportunities with Japanese anime and idol groups and will be producing a Japanese Idols album in the Fall. He has also just launched his GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for his business. 

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