Junta Nakai knows exactly how he got here.
Here, is his position as the global vice president at Databricks, a San Francisco-based data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) company. The globe’s sixth-largest startup, Databricks, was recently valued at $62 billion.
And how is through a series of small, intentional acts to learn, adapt, and create a fulfilling professional life, from embracing his liberal arts education at Northwestern University to earnest reflection on society’s forward charge to a daring career pivot.
Serendipity plays a role, acknowledges Nakai, Weinberg College’s 2025 Convocation speaker, but it is the human mind and spirit that truly power the day.
Expanding his limits
Intentionality has long resonated with Nakai.
During a Northwestern campus tour as a high school student, Nakai remembers learning about The Rock and its cultural standing on campus. The tradition of painting and repainting The Rock with varied messages fascinated.
“I loved this idea of being intentional about what you put out there,” he says. “To make your thoughts stick, there was work required.”
Born in Japan and raised in Connecticut, Nakai entered Northwestern as an economics major with one clear goal: to work on Wall Street. As a junior high student, he saw the grandiose homes of classmates and discovered their parents worked in the nation’s financial epicenter.
For Nakai, economics represented a gateway to social mobility. The field also offered a distinct framework for making sense of the world, especially when paired with a liberal arts education challenging Nakai to think critically about different subjects.
“Northwestern expanded my horizons, giving me a worldliness and way to think about things in new ways.” – Junta Nakai ’04
Early on at Northwestern, for instance, Nakai recalls a philosophy class bending and stretching his mind with topics he struggled to comprehend. Whereas formulas fueled economics, philosophy seemed “wildly subjective.”
“It absolutely blew my mind to see how people’s minds operated in such different ways,” Nakai says. “It helped me realize the gaps in my thinking.”
In his senior year, following a study abroad year at the London School of Economics, Nakai took a public speaking class, even though the idea of standing before a crowd stirred anxiety and fear.
“Was I going to let that fear define me or was I going to rise above it?” he says.
Nakai chose the latter. He learned about leveraging the power of storytelling to connect with people and how to deliver a message with confidence and authenticity.
Pursuing tech’s promise
After graduating from Northwestern in 2004, Nakai captured the life he once wanted. He ascended the corporate ranks of Goldman Sachs over the ensuing 14 years, moving from analyst to various leadership roles in the firm’s Equities division.
Amid his career climb, however, Nakai witnessed rampant change around him, including automation and technology slicing headcount. As longtime colleagues received pink slips, Nakai decided he would rather be the disruptor than the disrupted.
Nakai began chasing positions in the AI field, betting artificial intelligence would be the “defining technology” of his generation. Firm after firm rejected him, citing his lack of experience in tech. Nakai responded by immersing himself in an unfamiliar world. He took online classes in data science and computer programming and treated technologists to coffee to garner a frontline perspective.
“It wasn’t much different from taking those courses in philosophy and public speaking at Northwestern,” he says. “I wasn’t good at those things, either, but I had the courage to try.”
Eventually, an upstart financial tech company called Selerity gave Nakai a shot. He accepted the position – and the 85 percent pay cut. When Nakai, then a 35-year-old father of two young children, delivered his resignation to Goldman, his boss openly asked Nakai about his mental well-being.
“People thought I was crazy, but I figured better to be a year early than a day late,” he says. “I needed my foot in the tech sector’s door.”
Thereafter, Nakai aggressively pushed the door open with both hands, boldly and “naively” desiring to be “the face of AI.” He began writing about the intersection of AI and finance, including penning a December 2018 article for Business Insider on how AI was transforming Wall Street. The widely read piece ignited Nakai’s public profile and catapulted him onto the speaking circuit.
Touting human skill in the digital age
In 2019, Nakai joined Databricks, then a 400-person firm in the fast-accelerating AI field.
Databricks helps enterprises around the globe manage and extract value from their data and AI. Nakai runs its financial service, public sector, cybersecurity, and sustainability go-to-market organizations, which puts Nakai and his team in direct contact with some of the world’s biggest banks, insurance companies, cybersecurity firms, and government entities. The work provides Nakai a “front-row seat into the future,” as Databricks has helped pharmaceutical companies invent new therapeutics, governments sharpen national security, and banks cultivate a more inclusive financial service ecosystem.
“I talk to people all day, every day, about the once-insurmountable problems they’re solving with data and AI,” Nakai beams.
Even as technology accelerates, Nakai believes human skills honed in the liberal arts classroom like critical thinking, collaboration, and complex problem solving remain critical in the professional world – an encouraging message he plans to share with Weinberg College’s latest crop of graduates on June 14.
“Machines extrapolate past trends, but it’s humans who have to think about new things and solve complex problems and work with others,” he says. “Many of the things you learn in a liberal arts education are the things technology cannot replicate.”
More on Junta
Alumni Spotlight Q&A: Meet Junta Nakai ‘04
Below, listen to Junta’s talk with Weinberg College students as he shares insights about his time at Northwestern as an Economics major, his career journey since graduation, and his advice for current students.