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Terri was born in 1958 in New York City’s Harlem. She grew up in a working class neighborhood in Queens, attended the High School of Music and Art majoring in voice and piano, and attended Fordham University as an English major.

She was probably destined to become a bit conventional. You know: 2 car garage in the suburbs, 2 kids, striving hubby, church every Sunday, etc.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But Terri was(is) a lifestyle beta tester, a people geek – fascinated by the spirit that drives human communication. The lives she read about in her beloved science fiction fantasy, or wrote about as part of her elementary school greeting card business, or sang about in dreadful songs she wrote as a young punk rock bandleader: she wanted to live all those lives, and watch what happened. Not the most comfortable type of family member to have, no doubt. Fortunately, her parents and her only brother overcame their frustration with her life choices, and showered her with her with consistent and unshakeable love.

So, life went on after leaving Fordham University at 2 years. Terri spent 10 years as Manager of Business Affairs of CBS Records International, with a promotion just before Sony bought the place.

She lived in an urban construction commune in the East Village: alternative lifestyle by night, good junior executive by day. But the business side of the music business was the wrong place to be – she simply wasn’t hip, or interested enough in being fashionable. It was hard to leave, because it was a fairly cushy situation, with travel, a decent salary and some interesting mentors. But, soon, it felt like it was time to move on. In the meantime, one of the places she traveled to was Japan. And the alternative/underground music scene caught her attention immediately: great, strange mixed Western music from a Japanese ‘outside’ perspective.

So, (joined eventually by her then business partner), she conceived the idea of managing these amazing bands and introducing them outside of Japan. She left CBS, and then came the Pizzicato Five (Nakagawa Katsuhiko, Joe Hisaishi, GAO, Buffalo Daughter, Pugs, and FEED) years.



Artist management income is seldom consistent, so she did stints at Paisley Park Music, Kampo Cultural Center and being the Japan rep for the New Music Seminar.




Finally, Terri moved into dedicated entrepreneur-dom. That meant lots of travel, almost living, in Japan, and finally moving there to manage P5 worldwide. Then the band broke up and it was time to work as a writer and editor, doing video and audio production with her then-business partner, and searching for a way to stay in Japan and yet, eat.



She wrote a book about GW Bush ‘Fushigi no Kuni no Bush’ (Bush in Wonderland), became a Howard Dean activist, joined the movable intellectual online feast of America’s progressive political movements (where she learned a lot about building and maintaining communities).




She hung out, albeit briefly, with one of her writing heroes, Neil Gaiman, and one of her business inspirations, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg.




She worked for an online ESL company with long time friend, singer-songwriter Kayoko, producing hundreds of podcasts at the dawn of that medium’s first popular wave in Japan. They even got to sing together in the off hours. Here’s the list of shows they worked on – they’re still available in iTunes, and some are available as audiobooks:

She became Field Director, North Asia for Obama ’08. She did some English teaching, but relatively little. When she’s not working as a part time Specialist at Apple Shibuya, she does things like:

  • write song lyrics and essays
  • WordPress site developer
  • new media coach
  • business presentation coach

So now, that’s her focus, and it feels right. It’s not a particularly easy road, but there is never a dull moment. Life is filled with constant learning, creation, honing skills, and gaining deeper understanding of the things that matter to her. And along with way, she is filled with gratitude for friends and family and invisible mentors. And she’s grateful for the chance to continue make her life a work in progress.

Here’s what she’s working on at the moment:

Community Projects

Personal Projects

  • learning Japanese, php, javascript & css
  • running (actually, walking very quickly)
  • yoga
  • writing
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