Lead humanly. Learn constantly. Build with AI.

I'm Jay Vergara. I grew up in Vancouver, B.C. and I've been living in Tokyo for over a decade now. Came thinking I'd stay a year or two and then... well, you know how that goes.

I've spent most of my career in learning and development. Indeed, Rakuten, TELUS, Yellow Pages. Building training programs and leading L&D teams and trying to figure out why most corporate learning doesn't actually stick.

These days I run Peak Potential Consulting with my business partner Matt Gates. We help companies build leaders, teams, and learning cultures that work across borders.

I also can't stop thinking about AI. Not in the "robots are coming for your job" way but in the "this changes everything about how we develop people and I want to be figuring it out" way. I use AI every single day to run the business, write content, pursue my MBA at GLOBIS University, and build systems I couldn't have built alone.

Lead Humanly is the human side. Cross-cultural communication, leadership development, corporate learning strategy. The stuff I've spent my career figuring out, often by getting it wrong first.

Build with AI is the practical side. Tutorials, workflow breakdowns, honest takes on what AI can and can't do for people in HR, L&D, and leadership. Not theory but things I've actually built and used.

The thesis behind all of it is simple. The leaders who will matter most in the next decade are the ones who are deeply human AND technologically fluent. Not one or the other but both.

I'm a dad. I speak English natively and Japanese professionally. I'm pursuing an MBA not because I needed the credential but because I genuinely wanted to understand what I didn't know.

I believe the best content comes from experience. Not expertise performed for an audience.

Find me on LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok — or visit the Connect page for everything.