ギルド名鑑No.216 Project MINT 植山智恵さん

(The English version follows the Japanese text.)

港区を起点にいろんなところで働く・暮らす、楽しい時間を創りたい人たちによるコミュニティCreative Guild。このギルド名鑑ではそんなCreative Guildでつながったユニークな方々をご紹介しています。今回ご紹介するのは、株式会社Project MINT代表取締役の植山智恵さん。年齢や立場などの既成概念にとらわれることなく、世代を越えて人と人をつなぎ、一人ひとりの経験を次の誰かの可能性へと手渡す循環型のコミュニティづくりを推進しています。

植山さんは津田塾大学卒業後、ソニーに入社。2015年に渡米し、シリコンバレーで教育系スタートアップの米国展開やEdTech調査に従事しました。その後、ミネルバ大学大学院のパイロット生として学び、2019年に意思決定分析の修士課程を修了し、日本人初の修了生となりました。同年帰国してProject MINTを設立。アクティブラーニングと対話を通じて、大人が内発的動機やパーパスを見いだし、行動へ踏み出す学びの場を展開しています。現在は、人生の先輩との対話から自分の未来を描く「FUTURE YOU」にも取り組んでいます。

植山さんが大切にしているのは、「循環」です。人生の成功も迷いも、本人だけの物語で終わらせず、対話を通じて次の誰かの学びや挑戦へ手渡していく。そこには、年齢や肩書きにかかわらず、誰もが社会に生かせる経験と可能性を持っているという信念があります。支援する側とされる側を固定せず、互いに学び、受け取ったものをまた誰かへ返していく。その循環を育む植山さんは、答えを教える指導者ではなく、人が自分の力で人生を更新し、社会とつながり直すための場をひらく実践者です。

「人生100年時代」と言われながら、私たちは今も、年齢・肩書き・所属によって人の価値や役割を決め、定年、出産、育児、介護などの転機を「可能性の縮小」として捉えがちです。さらにAIが答えを瞬時に示す時代だからこそ、誰かの人生に耳を傾け、成功だけでなく迷いや失敗も、生きた知恵として手渡す場が必要ではないでしょうか。孤独や世代間の分断が深まる社会で、私たちは一人ひとりの経験を個人の記憶で終わらせず、次の誰かの可能性を開く社会資産として循環させられているでしょうか。

植山さんの取り組みは、年齢や肩書きによって人の可能性を区切る社会から、一人ひとりの経験を次の誰かへ手渡し、誰もが何度でも社会とつながり直せる社会への転換を促すものです。Project MINTやFUTURE YOUを通じて、世代を越えた対話と共感の場が各地に広がれば、孤独や分断を和らげるだけでなく、人生経験そのものが新たな挑戦を生む社会資産へと変わっていきます。答えを与えるのではなく、人の可能性を信じて場を育む植山さんの姿勢から学び、Creative Guildでも、自分の経験を誰へ、どのように手渡せるのかを共に考えていきましょう。

Carrying One Person’s Experience Forward into Another’s Possibility
How Project MINT CEO Tomoe Ueyama Is Building a Regenerative Community Beyond Bias

Back to the Japanese version.

Creative Guild is a community of people who work and live in many different places, with Minato City as a starting point, united by a desire to create joyful moments together. In this Guild Directory, we introduce some of the unique individuals connected through the Creative Guild community. This time, we feature Tomoe Ueyama, CEO of Project MINT Inc. Free from conventional assumptions about age, status, and social roles, she brings people together across generations and is building regenerative communities where each person’s experience can be passed on to open new possibilities for someone else.

After graduating from Tsuda University, Ueyama joined Sony. In 2015, she moved to the United States, where she supported the U.S. expansion of an education startup and conducted EdTech research in Silicon Valley. She later joined the inaugural pilot cohort at Minerva’s graduate school and completed a master’s degree in Decision Analysis in 2019, becoming its first Japanese graduate. Returning to Japan that same year, she founded Project MINT. Through active learning and dialogue, the organization creates spaces where adults can rediscover their intrinsic motivation and sense of purpose, and then take meaningful action. Today, she is also developing FUTURE YOU, an initiative that helps participants envision their own futures through conversations with people who have traveled further along life’s path.

At the heart of Ueyama’s work is the idea of circulation. Successes, doubts, and struggles should not remain private stories belonging only to the people who experienced them. Through dialogue, those experiences can be passed on as sources of learning and courage for someone else’s next challenge. Behind this belief is her conviction that everyone, regardless of age or title, carries experience and potential that can contribute to society. Rather than fixing people into the roles of “supporter” and “recipient,” she encourages them to learn from one another and pass forward what they have received. Ueyama is therefore not an instructor who simply provides answers. She is a practitioner who opens spaces where people can reshape their lives through their own agency and reconnect with society.

Although we often speak of the “100-year life,” society still tends to define a person’s value and role by age, title, or organizational affiliation. Turning points such as retirement, childbirth, parenting, and caregiving are frequently treated as a narrowing of future possibilities. Yet in an age when AI can produce answers in an instant, perhaps what we need more than ever are spaces where we truly listen to another person’s life—and where not only success, but also uncertainty, failure, and struggle can be passed on as living wisdom. As loneliness and intergenerational division deepen, are we allowing each person’s experience to remain only a private memory, or are we circulating it as a social asset that can open new possibilities for someone else?

Ueyama’s work invites a transition from a society that limits people according to age and title to one in which experience is passed forward and everyone can reconnect with society again and again. As Project MINT and FUTURE YOU expand opportunities for dialogue and empathy across generations, they may do more than ease loneliness and division. They may transform life experience itself into a shared social resource that inspires new challenges. Rather than offering ready-made answers, Ueyama trusts in people’s potential and patiently nurtures the spaces in which that potential can grow. Her example invites all of us in Creative Guild to consider a simple but profound question: To whom—and in what form—might we pass on our own experience?

Back to the Japanese version.