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A scientist, an explorer, and a marketing-minded new business development professional and strategist. The evolutionary process unfolded...
Alison Mattos
Founder & Chief Strategist
Alison’s 24-year career weaves together multiple professional tracks in marine biology, the investment banking sector, and the travel industry. Beginning her career as a marine biologist, she explored vast blue oceans on remote expeditions taking inventory of fragile marine ecosystems. These expeditions served as inspiration to pursue her master’s degree evaluating the intrinsic value of human exploration & discovery and adventure expeditions as a vehicle for solving the biodiversity crisis. While attending graduate school in New York City, she worked on Wall Street, supporting C-suite executives.
Upon completing her master’s degree, she was catapulted into the adventure and luxury travel industry, leading new business development and strategic partnerships for esteemed luxury travel companies including TCS World Travel, Intrav, Abercrombie & Kent, and Travel Dynamics International. Alison is a seasoned sales & marketing professional with extensive experience sourcing, contracting, and managing high level partnerships with senior leaders, international business units, and partners across a diverse landscape including scientific &
research organizations, academic institutions, non-profit organizations, museums, professional associations & councils, iconic luxury brands, special interest entities, and the expansive global travel trade.
Alison founded Blue Yūgen out of a passion to contribute her industry expertise and skills to the visionaries doing the impossible and creating new products, technologies, and experiences that help solve real-world problems here on Earth. Blue Yūgen is a testament to Alison’s belief that the emerging new space economy is the future, and human advancement into space will forever change how we understand, protect, and conserve our living, breathing Earth.
A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Alison attended the University of Michigan, where she earned her Bachelor of Science. She completed her master's degree at New York University. Now living in Orange County, California, with her husband and two young children, she enjoys wandering the great outdoors with her family, teaching her children that the greatest Yūgen can be found in your own backyard. All you have to do is open your eyes.
Taemi Lim
Brand Strategist
Taemi is an interdisciplinary creative leader with 10+ years of experience developing and delivering brand identities and stewardship for global and start-up brands, including Intrav, National Geographic, Four Seasons, and REI Co-op. She brings a balanced mix of brand, marketing, and creative strategy to deliver results.
Our Values
Partnership
We build partnerships based on trust, equality, and fairness.
Ethical
Transparent, honest, and always taking the high road.
Communication
Honest dialogue and strong communication working towards a shared vision.
Gaia Conscious
Gaia rules. Our existence is thanks to our living, breathing Earth. Peace, love, respect, and above all, protect and conserve.
Loyalty Counts
We're in it for the long haul — a rarity in itself these days.
Passionate
Committed to the cause and driven to deliver results.
The most important meeting you will ever have with your people is the first one - because it is absolutely vital that everyone knows exactly what your values are from Day One. In this meeting, you need to establish who you are, what you're going to do, and how you plan on doing it
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— Bo Schembechler, University of Michigan Wolverine Foootball Coach , 1969-1989. Bo's Lasting Lessons by
Bo Schembechler and John U. Bacon
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Blue
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The Earth with its 4.5-billion-year pedigree of Mother Nature's engineering feats.
Yugen
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A term rooted in the Japanese language, describing nature's mysterious profundity; the word itself describes a feeling you have when you see something, an emotion evoked with the heart.
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An awareness of the Universe that triggers an emotional response too deep and powerful for words. Some could say it's akin to the "Overview Effect," a term coined by Frank White, author & space philosopher, describing the cognitive shift astronauts experience when viewing the Earth from space. Reported as a profound reaction and a heightened sense of awe shifting an astronaut's perception of themselves, our deeply interconnected planet and our relationship to it, and our understanding of the future.