Christian Pierce has spent his career studying, practicing, and teaching leadership in the places where it is hardest to fake: military units, international classrooms, and the Jiu Jitsu academy floor.

A graduate of West Point, he served as a U.S. Army Captain in Air Defense, with deployments across the Middle East and joint service alongside the Air Force. The military taught him that formal authority is the least interesting part of leadership. What holds a team together under pressure is trust, and trust has to be built long before it is tested.

After the Army, Christian earned an MSc in Business at COPPEAD in Rio de Janeiro and a PhD in Organization Studies and Cultural Theory at the University of St. Gallen. His doctoral research examined how dignity is enacted, negotiated, and sometimes violated inside Alliance Jiu Jitsu, one of the world's leading academies, the study from which Jukeido was born.

The Jiu Jitsu academy is where all of it comes together. Christian has been teaching, competing, and training in Jiu Jitsu for over twenty years, and holds a 2nd degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu under Renzo Gracie, alongside black belts in Judo and Hoteikan Ju Jutsu. He teaches Jiu Jitsu to everyone from executives and engineers to refugees, because the lesson is the same for all: dignity first, then technique.

He lives in Switzerland and works with organizations across Europe in English and Portuguese.