Ko
“co” meaning together
+
Dama
“lady” in Italian
=
Kodama
in Japanese, the spirit of the tree
+ an “S”, because we are two : )These meanings mirror Daniela’s Italian heritage and Emma’s expat experience in Japan. Interestingly, “ko” is also an essential rule in the game of “Go”, preventing the immediate recapture of a stone to avoid infinite repetition - something that we find fundamental to continued progress, learning and growth.
Emma
“Business requires empathy; it’s the most underrated and unseen skill”
From the Canadian Rocky Mountains 🏔️ 12 years in Japan. Director of Business Growth at HappyCow (6+ years).
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Scaled the Partner Program by 450% to profitability in 18 months.
Lead a team of 20 through acquisition and change management.
Grew the Instagram community by 110k+.
Psychology grad.
Obsessively organized. Found sitting on a bicycle or on the floor.
Wanted to work with Daniela because she’s consistent, reliable, and produced some of the best UX she’d ever seen.
Dani
“How your team works internally always reflects on your end users.”
From some of the biggest cities in the world to the countryside growing her own vegetables 🥕 🥦 🧅. Fractional Head of Product, Delivery Manager & Design Lead, at HappyCow and Work for Impact.
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Built-from-scratch Product Information Management App at WARDA
Loves implementing incident & bug reporting flows.
Visual Arts and International Relations grad.
Trying to emulate Emma’s bio as she is not great at English copywriting (while doing attempt No.1 of her first book, in Italian 🇮🇹).
Wanted to work with Emma because simply seeing her in action was enough to decide to do something good together.
Our Manifesto
People + process = consistent delivery
Companies that have a purpose shouldn’t be thinking only about the mission of the company, they should also be concerned about the well-being of their people and culture - first and foremost.
Better workflows, less stress, clear and structured patterns for work - these generate more calm and focus, and ultimately help your people to truly fulfil your mission - not merely generate higher productivity at a high cost.
We don’t buy into the belief that the ends justify the means; we know that the product reflects how it’s built.
Particularly in our current epoch, the narrative is reflected by “How can AI help me make more money by cutting the number of people who work for me?” That viewpoint contains a big fallacy, because it sets up productivity to defy the very people it’s supposed to support in the first place.
AI should help you be more successful by making your people more successful. More, not less.
Therefore, we are all for helping companies that want to incorporate technology (including AI) thoroughly, but in an ethical way.
We are not going to help you reduce your team with AI.
If you’re looking for someone to cut your costs by reducing the number of people on your team, you should leave this page now.
The mark of a good company is being able to support people, not to get rid of them.
Delivery isn’t about control; it’s about clarity.
We build lean, empathetic frameworks that help ambitious teams focus on what matters, anticipate what’s next, and ship with confidence - in a way that empowers, not diminish.
Want to optimize your internal workflows?
At Kodamas, we help teams design scalable systems that reduce friction, improve communication, and make collaboration effortless.
If your bug reporting or internal ops feel like chaos, let’s turn them into clarity.