Rakuten — Enterprise AI Adoption

Rakuten — Director / Senior Project Manager (Product & Project Operations)

Tokyo · 2024 – Present

Scope: Enterprise AI enablement, governance, communications, training and adoption across 40,000+ Rakuten employees globally.

The challenge

Take a 40,000+ employee, multi-country, multi-business-unit organisation and meaningfully accelerate its move from AI curiosity to AI fluency — with governance, education and tooling that scale.

What I’m doing

• Directing enterprise-wide AI adoption across Rakuten global business units — driving AI literacy, operational transformation and employee engagement, contributing to a 60%+ increase in internal AI platform engagement and training participation.
• Leading the strategy, design and rollout of mandatory company-wide AI training programmes — achieving 85%+ completion rates across multiple business functions in the first rollout phases.
• Spearheading the Global Rakuten AI Portal — a centralised destination for AI tools, communications, governance, training and innovation initiatives, supporting thousands of monthly employee interactions.
• Partnering with senior leadership, engineering, product and operational stakeholders to accelerate enterprise AI transformation and long-term organisational change.

Key impact

Established foundational AI enablement infrastructure supporting enterprise-wide AI adoption, employee education, and operational transformation at scale.

• 40,000+ employees in scope across Japan and global business units
• 60%+ uplift in internal AI platform engagement
• 85%+ completion on mandatory AI training rollouts
• A centralised AI portal serving as the single source of truth for AI at Rakuten

Capabilities applied

Enterprise AI Strategy · AI Governance · Change Management · Learning & Enablement · Product Strategy · Stakeholder Alignment · Internal Comms · Operating-Model Design

Building the bridge between AI capability and organisational adoption — so the technology actually lands.