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Technology, Leadership, and Operation at Your Service.
Our leadership team is composed by professors, researchers, investors, and innovators. The combination of our skillset has allowed us to create a technology that is effectively revolutionizing the sport industry.
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Meet Our CEO:
Rocco Baldassarre
Founder and
CEO
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Rocco Baldassarre is an acclaimed marketing and advertising expert, recognized for his achievements and contributions to the field. He was shortlisted as Young Search Professional of the Year at both the US and European Search Awards in 2013 and 2014 and featured in Forbes 30 under 30 for Marketing and Advertising. He also received the Microsoft Marketing MVP Award.
Baldassarre is a regular guest writer for Forbes and Entrepreneur.com and holds many degrees, including an MS in International Management, an MS in Business Administration and Management, a BS in International Business & Marketing, and a BS in Business Administration. He has also shared his expertise as a guest teacher at Duke University, the University of Turin, and Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore.
Expanding his professional scope, Baldassarre ventured into entrepreneurship, investing in the insurance, fitness, and car industries. These investments reflect his diverse business acumen and ability to adapt to various market dynamics. His entrepreneurial journey showcases his versatility and strategic foresight in various commercial sectors.
Trusted by
Become Your Best.
Meet Our Geniuses and Founding Partners That Created Our Technology:
Allan Bird, Ph.D.
Chief Cultural Officer
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Dr. Bird has served as President of The Kozai Group, Inc. since 2001. He is also a Senior Professor at the Goa Institute of Management in Goa, India. From 2009 to 2019 he was the Darla and Frederick Brodsky Trustee Professor in Global Business at Northeastern University.
He teaches courses in global leadership development, intercultural management, international negotiations, and intercultural and global leadership assessment. He is a qualified administrator of the Global Competencies Inventory and speaks and reads Japanese.
He has authored, co-authored, or edited nine books, over 40 book chapters, and more than 60 journal articles. His most recent book (with M.E. Mendenhall, J.S. Osland, G.R. Oddou, M.L. Maznevski, M. Stevens, and G. Stahl) Global Leadership: Research, practice, and development (3nd Edition) was published in 2019. The second edition won an Award of Merit for Research Scholarship and was a finalist for the University of San Diego’s Leadership Book of the Year Award in 2013.
Mark Mendenhall, Ph.D.
Director of Cognitive-Behavioral Performance
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Dr. Mendenhall is an internationally recognized scholar in the field of global leadership and international human resource management. He is past president of the International Management Division of the Academy of Management.
In 1998, he held the Ludwig Erhard Stiftungsprofessur endowed chair at the University of Bayreuth (Germany), and from 1999-2004 he was a visiting professor at the Europa Institute at the University of Saarland (Germany). In 2013, he was a visiting professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria), and from 2009-2015 was a visiting professor at Reykjavik University (Iceland).
He has published 122 journal articles and scholarly book chapters in a variety of publications, including Academy of Management Review, Journal of International Business Studies, Sloan Management Review, Academy of Management Learning & Education, Human Relations, Organizational Dynamics, Human Resource Management, Management International Review, and Journal of Management Inquiry.
Gary Oddou, Ph.D.
Partner
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Dr. Gary Oddou, Ph. D., professor emeritus, has taught, researched and consulted in the area of international human resource management for over 30 years. His research focus has been in the area of expatriate adjustment and training, repatriate reintegration and knowledge transfer expatriate-repatriate best practices and global leadership.
He has published over 45 articles and book chapters on these topics and written or co-edited three books related to international human resource management and global leadership. He has been invited to speak on these topics at universities and at business conferences in Europe, Canada, the U.S. and Asia.
Dr. Oddou has consulted with multinational firms in the areas of expatriate and repatriate management both in the United States, Japan and in Europe. Dr. Oddou has held department chair positions at San Jose State University and Utah State University. He developed and directed the Global Business Management program at CSU San Marcos.
Michael Stevens
Ph.D.
Vice President of Psychometrics & Data Analytics
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Michael Stevens, Ph D., is a Distinguished Presidential Professor of Leadership and Management Studies in the Goddard School of Business & Economics at Weber State University. He is also a founding partner of the Kozai Group consultancy where he has played a central role in the development and validation of multiple psychometric assessments used by more than 260,000 individuals in a wide variety of organizational settings, across 130 different countries and in 14 languages. In addition, his applied research and teaching focus have allowed him over 25 years of active engagement with global leaders from corporate, government, non-profit, and educational sectors.
His primary areas of expertise include: interpersonal effectiveness in the workplace; individual assessment for staffing and selection; executive coaching and leadership development; and the impact of leadership on organizational culture and employee performance. Much of this work has culminated in the recent release of the “ProSocial Leadership”™ framework, which is used to guide corporate culture change initiatives that leverage a business’s people and company culture as the basis for an enduring competitive edge.
Dr. Stevens is a widely cited educator who has conducted award-winning work; he is currently active in several professional societies and has held leadership and board positions in a variety of non-profit, government, and education institutions.
Sport Psychology:
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Dr Derick Anderson is a clinical and sports psychologist with over 25 years of experience in sports and performance psychology, and mental health training and care in unique settings.
He began his work in sports psychology with the Miami Dolphins in the late 1990’s before transitioning to a consulting position in the NFL.
After several years in these roles he took a hiatus from sports psychology to devote his professional efforts to consulting to the U.S. Army and Army Corps of Engineers.
After 5 years working domestically and abroad with the Armed Forces, he moved on to support efforts around mental health and performance with first responders and elite law enforcement. In addition to providing performance strategies he was also central to the development of wellness initiatives and profiling techniques for Internet Crimes Against Children Investigators and the U.S. Marshals.
After several fulfilling years with Law Enforcement he returned to the sports world as Director of Sport and Performance for the New York Mets for 6 years and is currently in the same role with the Miami Marlins, the Florida Panthers and was until recently a clinical consultant with the NBA.
Brian Millett,
Director of IT
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Brian Millett has 30 years of IT experience including Software Development, System Maintenance and Systems Integration. Brian has developed award winning applications (Intelligent Fault Locator), contributed to open source projects such as mod_perl, coocon v1, and scap-security-guide. Brian is a two time (RHEL3/RHEL6) Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) with 10+ years of enterprise level Linux experience. Brian received his B.S. in Computer Science from California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo in 1984.
Norihito Furuya
Ph.D.
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Norihito Furuya, Ph.D., is Senior Representative of the Kozai Group in Japan. He is also CEO of IGB Network Co., Ltd (Global Organization and Human Capital Development Institute). IGB Network specializes in global training and coaching for managers, global HR assessment, global HR capital solutions, HRM system and organizational development, and research and development. He has lived and worked in the United States, the Middle East, and the UK, totaling nine years of overseas working experience as an expatriate manager for Japan Airlines.
He has over 30 years experience working internationally and has extensive experience in conducting training and consultation services in the arena of global human resource management for 35 of the leading firms in Japan. Twelve years ago, he initiated the International Training Division of JAL Academy, a collaborative venture with JAL, BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), and Thunderbird (AGISM)). He holds a Bachelor’s degree of Social Science from Waseda University, an MBA from Aoyama Gakuin University, and a Ph.D from Tsukuba University.
Meet Our COO:
Andrea Schiassi
Founder and Managing Partner
Andrea Schiassi, raised in a Steiner educational environment and holding a teaching diploma in this field, developed interests in various areas from a young age. At 17, he started working at Mediaset, developing communication skills through television, advertising, theater, and cinema. After completing his education in Communication Sciences with a Master's in Business Administration and an experience as a marketing director for Viareggio Calcio, he moved to multinational companies, specializing in marketing and media.
His career took a turn when he delved into the world of poker, moving between Asia and Australia, where he worked in real estate and developed a professional poker career. This experience led him to leave traditional employment to dedicate himself to the study of humanities, statistics, and trading, focusing on scalping in financial markets.
Finally, his passion for sports and data analysis led him to co-found Human Data Intelligence with Rocco Baldassarre, aiming to provide advanced support in a rapidly expanding field.
Andrea Bailo,
Project Manager
Andrea is a senior professional with around 25 years of experience in corporate communication and public affairs in large scale global corporations and multinational PR consultancy firms.
He has a consolidated experience in managing integrated and complex projects, at national and international level, with a focus on omnichannel communication and multi-stakeholder engagement, strengthened through a day-by-day teamwork attitude performed in dynamic and challenging matrix environments.
Over the years, he has developed strong negotiation skills – built on a creative thinking and problem solving approach – with proven ability in coordinating functions of different areas, as well as in developing/maintaining strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders.
Andrea during his professional path had the chance to deal with many industrial sectors companies, such as healthcare and devices, automotive, sport, energy, luxury, merchant banking, private equity, asset management, wellness, large scale distribution and industrial associations for which he set up and realized ad hoc strategies and activities, like media relations, government affairs, crisis management, events organization, digital PR, in close collaboration with marketing and sales departments.
Meet Our Advisors
Felice Raimondo
Legal Advisor
Lawyer Felice Raimondo is the owner of the eponymous law firm. After graduating in Law, he began his legal career in Campobasso at the District Attorney's Office, deepening his expertise in various areas of civil law, including banking, consumer, and contract law.
He quickly developed a passion for sports law and, after opening a second law firm in the city of Vasto, he founded an informational blog in 2016. He has authored over 200 online articles on legal, economic, and financial topics applied to the world of football.
Many of his insights have been mentioned in industry monographs and cited by national and international media, including Forbes. He is the author of four publications totaling approximately 1,200 pages on sports law. Two volumes gather numerous articles focused on AC Milan's corporate events, from the sale to the Chinese investors to the transition to the Elliott fund.
The third publication revolves around Financial Fair Play (2018 edition), while the latest one is centered on the phenomenon of the Super League, an essay written in 2021 that delved into the organization of sports tournaments and predicted the outcome of the dispute before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CGUE).
He personally manages the website www.feliceraimondo.it, where he continues to publish articles on legal current events and sports law within his blog and Substack column.
Pietro Balzano Prota,
Head of Communication
After a brief football career at the youth level, he specialized in communication focused on the football world.
He started from the bottom, beginning as a simple editor, and eventually wrote for national newspapers or outlets like Sport Mediaset, and for 4 years, he launched and directed the Radio Rossonera project, which is still a successful media today.
The desire for growth and constant evolution led him to move away from traditional journalism and embrace digital communication. In a short time, he became the Head of Media House at First, a well-known agency, managing the digital image of footballers like Dani Olmo, Zaniolo, and many others.
Not one to stay too long in his comfort zone, convinced that only stepping out of it can lead to improvement and growth, he decided to join a new project as Head of Management in a successful Italian talent agency.
He firmly believes in mental strength and in improving performance based on data analysis, so it was only natural for him to embrace the HDI project.