If boards treat today's disruptions as passing storms rather than structural resets, and make high-stakes decisions as the rules of globalization, technology, and power are being rewritten in real time, they risk becoming blindsided.
In the following interview, Lynn Miteva, chairman and CEO of Miami-based Kizoku Media, explains how her board leverages geopolitical literacy, AI fluency, and narrative intelligence to read weak signals, anticipate system-level changes, and manage volatility rather than reacting to headlines.
For directors, her approach provides practical strategies. That means hiring people who can interpret complex global dynamics, integrate AI without relinquishing judgment, and design organizations to operate in volatile conditions rather than waiting for “normal” to return.
What are the most pressing topics that boards are grappling with these days?
The most pressing issue facing Kizoku Media is a fundamental recalibration of the geopolitical, economic, and technological systems that have dominated the past two decades. This is not the 1950s or 1980s. Today's situation is far more intertwined, and never before have the Western and Eastern worlds been so interconnected or in competition.
The global system that has been built over the past 10-15 years has not been efficient. It was a fragile system with a combination of artificial stability, perverse incentives, and unrealistic dependencies. What we are witnessing now is a predictable recalibration of an overextended system.
Our board is focused on understanding this transition as a systemic pattern rather than an anomaly. I experienced a similar movement during the perestroika era of the 1990s. What appears to be chaos is often the early stages of a new equilibrium. This time, however, coordination will be more complicated because neither side of the geopolitical divide is willing to make economic, technological, or ideological concessions.
The themes that are pressing for us are geopolitical fragmentation, the weaponization of narratives, the acceleration of AI, deglobalization, and the rise of strategic competition across all industries. We look beyond the headlines to examine systemic signals, the deeper currents that shape markets, leadership, and long-term decision-making.
How do you alleviate some of your company's toughest challenges?
Our toughest challenge is building a company that can operate within a system that is subject to stress, fragmentation, and constant readjustment. We alleviate this problem by treating strategy as a living system rather than a fixed plan. We map geopolitical signals, economic patterns, changing narratives, and technological disruptions as interconnected variables rather than isolated events. This helps predict second- and third-order effects long before they become mainstream.
One of our core tools is ontological modeling to understand how information, cognition, and behavior interact. Because we operate at the intersection of AI, media, and political economy, we cannot afford to make decisions after the fact. We perform continuous scenario testing and stress testing assumptions, similar to how financial institutions stress test their portfolios.
We also actively reduce dependence on a single technology, single market, or single narrative. A key part of our resilience strategy is to diversify our people, data perspectives, and strategic inputs to avoid being locked into a single worldview.
Finally, we embrace the “friction is information” philosophy that most companies avoid. We treat challenges not as disruptions, but as signals that the system is revealing its next steps. This mindset turns uncertainty into a strategic advantage and allows you to take action when others are hesitant.
What's new in the way we hire directors?
We have fundamentally redefined the qualifications for joining a board of directors. Traditional boards are filled with industry veterans who understand their subject matter but lack literacy in geopolitics, economics, and systems thinking, which in today's world means they are making decisions in the dark.
At Kizoku Media, we only hire leaders who understand political economy, technology acceleration, and macrosystem dynamics. In today's environment, you can't make meaningful strategic decisions without knowing what's going on geopolitically.
We look for intellectual independence, pattern recognition, and the ability to interpret weak signals before they become a crisis. We value people with interdisciplinary experience who understand finance, technology, media, governance, and global power structures.
I also avoid people who rely entirely on consensus thinking. The past 10-15 years have created the illusion that strategy is simply about optimization and collaboration. Those days are over. The people we hire need to be comfortable working with ambiguity, recognizing structural changes, and being able to make decisions without a prescribed playbook.
In other words, we employ board members who think like strategists rather than managers. This is someone who understands the world as a dynamic system and can guide the company through volatility, competition, and accelerating technological change.
How are boards responding to the opportunities and risks of emerging technologies?
Our Board of Directors approaches emerging technologies through a unified framework. Technology, geopolitics, economics, and the influence of narrative are inseparable. We evaluate all innovations, especially AI, not only for their functionality, but also for the political, economic, and social impact they cause. Kizoku Media operates at the intersection of AI and narrative systems, so we treat technology as a strategic variable rather than a trend.
While much of the world reacts with hype to “AI this, AI that”, we have been working on AI long before it became a mainstream conversation. I started training AI models on my own in 2022, long before the public acceleration in 2023 and 2024. That experience taught us something that most companies still don't understand. That is, while AI is powerful, it cannot replace judgment, geopolitical literacy, and strategic foresight.
We keep pace by incorporating technical experts, economists, political analysts, and narrative theorists into our decision-making processes. We track not just technological capabilities, but how states, companies, and networks weaponize and regulate them.
Our goal is not to chase every new technology, but to determine which technologies fundamentally change the rules of the system and be at the forefront of that change.
What are your strategies to help your company remain resilient?
Resilience for us is not stability, but adaptability, structural awareness, and strategic selectivity. We anticipate that the environment will continue to be unstable. Rather than expecting a return to “normal,” we are designing our company to operate in a volatile environment.
Our first strategy is systems literacy, which is understanding how political, economic, technological, and narrative systems interact. When you see the patterns behind the noise, you stop reacting and start anticipating.
Second, build resilience by diversifying perspectives, tools, and strategic paths. We avoid dependence on any single technology, market or partnership. Develop parallel options so that if one system changes, you can pivot without losing momentum.
Third, we maintain a culture where dissent is a strategic asset. Achieving resilience requires people who are willing to challenge assumptions, detect weak signals, and express uncomfortable truths early on.
Finally, integrate AI as an augmentation tool rather than an authority. While AI can help map narratives, identify stress points in systems, and model alternative scenarios, human judgment, particularly geopolitical and economic judgment, remains at the core of our decision-making.
Resilience today is not about comfort, but about being in tune with reality. The companies that will survive the next decade will be those that understand this system, not those that wait for it to settle down.
