Meet Lena Imamura

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lena Imamura a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Lena, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

I’ve always been obsessed with “self-growth” in an effort to become a better version of myself. Very early in my journey, I was drawn to frameworks. But most felt too surface. I eventually came across Ikigai — introduced to me by a friend and executive coach, Jamie Kim. It struck a chord, not just because of the power of the framework, but because I’m Japanese — and the word itself means “breath of life.” Something about that resonated deeper than the productivity-self assessments we often see online. It gave me permission to think of purpose as something bigger than myself.

But even Ikigai became too rigid over time. I kept trying to logic my way into purpose — trying to solve it like a puzzle. To make things fit. It wasn’t until I started paying attention to the actual patterns in my life — the emotional, psychological, creative, and even spiritual ones — that purpose began to emerge.
I now believe that purpose is a calling that arises from the repeating motifs of your life. Often, it’s linked to a healing journey — but I think that it’s not just about personal healing. It’s also about a gift you’re here to bring forth that lived through or emerged from that healing.

For me (and I think for many of us), that origin story lives in childhood. My parents were struggling artists — torn between the romantic freedom of creative life and the reality of raising a child in a foreign country. Their relationship unraveled under the pressure. As a result, I grew up both romanticizing the artist’s path and deeply fearing it — associating it with high agency and limitless living, as well as instability, loss, and fractured family.

That contradiction shaped my psyche. And ultimately, it revealed my purpose.

Eventually I came to realize I was here to transmute the magic of being human into form — to take what lives in the invisible and give it shape. That, to me, is the essence of creating. To make visible what’s possible. Because what artists do — what I do — is see what others cannot, and bring it into being. Shining that light became my calling. And quite literally, with light — because I work with light, electricity, and energy.

To become an alchemist — someone who transforms chaos into structure or dreams into form – at first, that meant helping build spaces, systems and businesses that could support the act of creating. But over time, I realized the deeper thread wasn’t just about business. It was about bringing ideas to life. Whether I’m making art, producing someone else’s vision, or developing a business — I’m always working with raw material and shaping it into something that holds meaning. That’s alchemy. And it’s the throughline of my life. And it tickles me to know that I grew up making potions, running around temples, watching Sailor Moon, and playing alone for hours as an only child — lost deep in my own world. So many of us were. And how many of us still long to give that world form?

The deeper and longer I stayed with that truth, the more expansive my purpose became. I realized the magic of being human is creation. And my purpose — my true north — is to live and protect that.
To guard and nurture the sacred act of bringing ideas into form.

That realization gave me a wide enough container to hold all that I am: artist, systems builder, producer, conductor, seer.

I think sometimes, the material definitions of purpose are too small. They trap us in narrow goals or job titles. But when we define purpose as an essence — as the invisible current behind all we do — it becomes something we can carry with us into every chapter.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

i! I’m Lena Imamura — a multidisciplinary artist, systems builder, and creative alchemist based in New York City. My work lives at the intersection of light, technology, and cultural infrastructure. I’m focused on building platforms, systems, and experiences that help creative energy take form — whether through artwork, business, or collective projects.

Professionally, I’m working across three main areas right now:

GLO Studio – a neon art and fabrication studio I co-founded in 2016. We’ve produced custom neon for artists, brands, and individuals around the world. What makes GLO special is how we reimagines neon as a form of personal and cultural expression — not just signage, but storytelling. We helped pioneer the modern neon design space and made light-based art more accessible and personal than ever before.

GLO Modern – a new extension of GLO that I’m launching this year with my co-founder, Lora Appleton. It’s an experimental gallery concept located in the front of GLO studio that curates limited-edition art objects, vintage pieces, and modern-day cultural souvenirs. It’s part gallery, part shop, part time capsule — and it’s meant to preserve the beauty of human imagination in tangible form.

Metalabel – I’m also a partner and Operations Director at Metalabel, a publishing platform and protocol that helps artists release work together under shared values. We’re building a new kind of infrastructure for collective creativity. We’re supporting artists in putting our their work in a way that’s aligned, sustainable, and together.

What excites me most about my work right now is the throughline: I get to build containers that protect and amplify creativity. Whether I’m sculpting light, developing a new release system, or curating a gallery experience, my focus is always on helping artists (myself included) bring the unseen into form — and do it in a way that lasts.

Coming up: We’re opening GLO Modern in NYC later this year, and I’m continuing to support a wave of exciting new drops at Metalabel that are testing what the next era of collective publishing can look like. I’m also returning to my personal studio practice in parallel, working on new light-based works that reflect my philosophy of energetic architecture.

At the heart of it, I believe creativity is a force that wants to move — and I’m here to help shape the channels that let it flow.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Three Most Important Qualities, Skills, or Areas of Knowledge

Looking back, the three qualities that were most impactful in my journey are:
Hustle, Agency, and Collaboration.
These weren’t just skills — they were lenses through which I learned to survive, create, and grow.

1. Hustle
For me, hustle came from a deep-rooted sense of survival. As the child of immigrant artists, I watched my parents live with immense creativity but also immense precarity. I grew up determined to never be a “suffering artist.” That gave me a relentless sense of independence — I knew I’d always take care of myself, follow my interests, and create a path that allowed for both freedom and stability.
Advice: Hustle doesn’t have to mean burnout. It means being resourceful, determined, and awake to opportunity — especially when you come from communities that don’t inherit structural power. Let your ambition be in service of your values, not your ego. Always stay humble.

2. Agency
I learned the concept of agency in middle school, at a progressive magnet school called NYC LAB for collaborative studies. Our teachers taught us that agency is your capacity to act — which is enabled when you understand the context you’re in. That was enlightening. Once I understood where I was in a system, I realized I could also change my position in it.
Advice: Agency grows when you connect self-awareness with action. Pay attention to your environment — and your own internal responses to it. The more you understand your place, your orientation, the more power you have to move within it.
3. Collaboration
I also learned early on that you can’t do anything meaningful alone. Collaboration wasn’t just group work — it was that no one does any thing alone, ever. Without a cup to drink water out of, you die. The recognition that everyone contributes in varying capacities, that people are different, and those differences are where magic happens. Throughout my life — whether managing artists, building studios, or launching projects — I’ve grown by working in strong, values-aligned teams.
Advice: Surround yourself with people who complement your blind spots and stretch your thinking. Collaboration isn’t about everyone agreeing — it’s about creating something larger than any one person could on their own.

These three qualities have shaped every chapter of my journey. They helped me move through fear, make things happen, and keep evolving as an artist and builder.

For those earlier in the journey: notice when you feel most alive, not just productive. That’s usually where one of these muscles is working — and where your next breakthrough lives.

What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?

This past year, my biggest area of growth has been deepening my personal healing journey — but in a way that brought me inward, not outward.

I’ve been learning to trust myself more fully: my body, my intuition, my own internal wisdom. Not the external experts. Not the systems or the gurus. Just me. That shift — from seeking validation to cultivating inner knowing — has been massive.

I’ve unearthed a deeper sense of love, clarity, and confidence that I simply could not have found outside of myself. It’s changed how I show up in my work, in my relationships, and in how I create. The more I listen inwardly, the more aligned everything becomes.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lenaimamura.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lenaimamura
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lena.imamura
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lena-imamura/

Image Credits

Trecy Wendy Wuattier for the workshop image only