Petaluma Profile: KPCA’s ‘Movie Muse’ Naomi Takeuchi

Naomi Takeuchi credits a wall painted green for her new gig as KPCA-FM’s “Movie Muse.”

“I was working on a couple of projects for classes in the Digital Media Program at SRJC,” she explains, “and I needed a green screen to create my Lego, stop-motion-animation film. I stumbled upon PCA (Petaluma Community Access) through an online meet-up group, and three hours of snapping and unsnapping Lego pieces later, I was a card-carrying PCA member ready to pitch a movie-centered radio show for Sunday afternoons.”

President and Founder of 1000 Cranes LLC, an international leadership development, strategic planning and social entrepreneurship firm, Takeuchi is also a member of the National Speakers Association and the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. She is one of the few Asian-American women on the speaking circuit. From 2011 to 2018, her company has been one of only twenty firms asked to be an exhibitor at the National Trademark Expo - a collaboration with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office - held annually at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, in Washington. D.C.

“I had to be creative to keep our presentations new and fresh,” she says, “and this led directly to developing cartoon character friends for the crane in a book entitled “The Crane in the Bamboo Forest.” I even bought a used rooster mascot costume and changed its beak and feathers to make it a crane.”

Born in San Francisco, Takeuchi grew up in Daly City and earned her BA in Genetics and Microbiology at Berkeley. She headed to North Carolina in the mid ’90s, to garner an Executive MBA from UNC’s Keenan-Flagler Business School and a certificate in nonprofit management from Duke. She then taught nonprofit management classes at Duke for over a dozen years.

As if that isn’t enough, Naomi is also a certified Tai Chi for Arthritis instructor.

Takeuchi credits several things for her return to California.

“I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina when the fight over extending equal rights to LGBT people blew up, and it made me realize how much I missed the SF Bay Area,” she says. “I also have a goal of generating passive income by getting my branded characters into digital media. But I needed to know more about the process. So I researched the best schools for animated filmmaking, and discovered that not only is SRJC top tier, it has a two-year program at a very reasonable price. Besides, it’s located in beautiful Sonoma County.”

Currently working on a certificate from SRJC in Digital Media, 3-D Modeling and Animation, Takeuchi is also honing her skills as a voice-over artist, so hosting a radio show is a perfect side-project for her.

“I’ve often been told I have a great voice for radio,” she acknowledges, “and when I pitched KPCA my ‘Movie Muse’ idea, they agreed.”

The weekly show features reviews of current movies, along with chats with industry professionals. “Movie Muse” broadcasts at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday evenings. KPCA has archived podcasts of several of Takeuchi’s past shows at moviemuse.com.

“My first broadcast featured an interview with PCA General Manager John Bertucci,” Takeuchi recalls. “It was on Super Bowl Sunday, so we caught those listeners who aren’t into football.”

(Contact Gil at gilmansergh@comcast.net)