About
Martial arts builds character. We help young people carry it into the rest of their lives.
Budo Accelerator is a nonprofit that turns martial arts training into leadership, with full scholarships for students who need them.
The dojo is one of the last apprenticeships left in American life: a place where a young person is known by name, held to a real standard, and corrected in front of others, week after week, for years. Martial arts schools are open most nights in most towns in America, and the students training in them already have what leadership requires.
For five years we have run leadership programs in Orange County for high school and college students. In early 2027, Budo Scholar opens nationally. Students keep training at their own school, and students who don't train yet get a guide to finding one near them. We supply the leadership curriculum, mentorship, community, and, when a family cannot afford it, the scholarship.
What we do
Programs for high school and college students
Students build leadership and the practical skills that follow from it, and they join a community of peers and mentors that tends to outlast the program itself.
We serve communities in need and offer full scholarships to students who qualify. Many of our students are, or will be, the first in their families to go to college.
Staff
Leadership
Josh Gold
CEO and Co-Founder
Josh has taught martial arts for more than thirty years and holds a 5th dan in aikido. He speaks on aikido to Fortune 500 companies and at idea festivals, and spent fifteen years in entrepreneurial and executive roles with Intel, Sony, Disney and Formula One.
Setsuko Okumura
Program Operations Director
Setsuko holds an MBA from USC's Marshall School of Business and spent more than a decade managing Broadcom's global real estate portfolio.
Wes Jarrell
Development Manager
Wes has trained martial arts for more than twenty years and has coached young people aged 4 to 18 for more than ten. He holds a B.S. in Kinesiology with a focus in youth development.
Daniela Gojinetchi
Director of Finance
Daniela studied at USC Leventhal and is a CPA and financial analyst with more than eight years in financial management.
Governance
Board of Directors
Josh Gold
CEO and Co-Founder
Chief Instructor and Co-Founder of Ikazuchi Dojo. Executive Editor of Aikido Journal.
Mark Tercek
Board Chair and Co-Founder
Senior Advisor at Centerview Partners. CEO of The Nature Conservancy from 2008 to 2019. Managing Director and Partner at Goldman Sachs from 1984 to 2008.
La'Tonya Rease Miles
Board member
Director of Sales and University Partnerships at ReUp Education. Chief Student Affairs Officer at Menlo College, 2021 to 2022. Executive Director of First Year Experience and Strategic Initiatives at UCLA, 2016 to 2021.
Ellis Amdur
Board member
Classical martial arts instructor, historian and author. Principal of Edgework Books.
Adrianne Wonnacott
Board member
Board Chair of Aikido West. Aikido instructor at Stanford University and Aikido West. Former Genentech researcher.