Tapi Shahwe
Brand & Culture Strategist
Works
Live Your Fantasy
One Time
Co-founder, Brand Strategist & Head of operations at One Time. A lifestyle brand inspired by travel, exploration and cultural connection.
Jan 2024 - Present
Tapi Shahwe moves between the corporate, the creative, and the cultural, building bridges where others see divisions.
At JTI, he delivers strategy, insights, and growth across more than one hundred retail accounts. With Live Your Fantasy, he founded a wellness brand and community for artists, launching Questions 4 LYF, a card game that sold out globally, and curating gatherings in London, Paris, and Copenhagen. With One Time, he has co-led activations in Miami, Paris, and other cities, creating spaces where communities connect through travel, music, and storytelling.
His work is rooted in the belief that creativity and business are not opposites but allies. He sees brands as living philosophies, capable of shaping culture as much as markets. For him, vision becomes tangible, ideas become activations, and communities become movements.
Guided by a passion for psychology and psychitecture, the design of spaces, systems, and experiences that shape how we think, feel, and connect, Tapi approaches his work through the principle of Ubuntu: “I am because we are.” This perspective drives him as a selfless community leader, committed to uplifting creatives, platforming new voices, and nurturing a global network of talent.
His vision is to carry this community into every space he enters, transforming ideas into movements, individuals into collectives, and collectives into culture.
Moments of Consciousness
Fragments of thought, captured in passing. Part diary, part philosophy, part blueprint for the worlds I want to build.
“Community is immunity”
“You are who you think you are”
“We can’t all be knocking on doors. Some of us have to build the building”
“It’s what you do when no one is watching”
“Passport stamps feed the soul”
“I think a lot about the people who would support you but can’t because they don’t know who you are”
“It’s a feeling more than anything”
“Relentless accountability”
“Therapy sessions in the ocean to keep my mind right”
“Manifesting abundance. Intention is everything”
“Doing whatever it takes at every given moment & that’s why I never have to worry”
“Belief based on incomplete evidence. delusion is necessary”
“Is home a physical place or the people within it?”
“The door that opens for me, opens for you too”
“You will never know that your throwaway comment put a battery in my back”
“If I couldn’t, then I wouldn’t. But I can”
“Two things can be true at the same time”
“How do you want to be remembered?“
“Would say I’m not sure what I did to deserve this but I do”
“I pray for the people who pray on my downfall”
“It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t know what you’re doing”
“Coming from where I come from, how could I not”
“This could all just be a dream. Nothings off the table”
“I may not live forever but I hope our creations will”
“There was a time we dreamed about everything we have. Now we got it, time to dream some more”
“I am a mosaic of everyone I’ve ever loved”
“Making it look easy is hard”
