SDI's work is conducted by senior practitioners with direct experience of the environments in which they advise, and the ability to operate wherever the situation requires.
Team
Founder
Martin Amar founded SDI to support leaders facing critical decisions, where timing matters and choices must be made before reversibility is lost.
For more than fifteen years, he has advised high-level decision-makers across political, private, and institutional spheres, in various advisory capacities, on five continents. His experience spans senior government, international finance, and multilateral institutions, including the French Treasury and major international organisations such as the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations system.
Over the course of this work, he observed a consistent structural gap in decision-making. Decisions were rarely constrained by a lack of expertise or available options, but by the point at which responsibility, timing, and irreversibility became binding, making judgment increasingly difficult to exercise.
SDI was created in response to this gap.Martin Amar’s professional toolkit reflects this trajectory. Trained as an economist, he brings a strong grounding in international finance, combined with extensive experience in economic diplomacy and high-level negotiation. His work draws on political economy, institutional economics, and organisational analysis.
Alongside his advisory work, he has taught at Sciences Po, Temple University Japan and Sorbonne University at graduate level, and has worked as a researcher at the University of Tokyo. He also pursues applied analytical work, publishing articles that examine contemporary economic, management, and institutional developments.
He holds a Master’s degree in International Economics from Paris Sorbonne University. A French national and resident of Japan since 2022, he is fluent in English, French, and Spanish, and has functional proficiency in Japanese.
Intellectual Property
At SDI, Scott Zarin advises on strategic decisions in which intellectual property shapes competitive positioning, cross-border dynamics, and long-term value.
Having practiced intellectual property law at Fulbright & Jaworski (now Norton Rose Fulbright) and at Darby & Darby before establishing his own practice, he has observed how intellectual property issues behave in environments ranging from multinational corporate strategy to closely-held enterprises navigating critical decisions, across a wide range of sectors.
Before entering law, Scott had already built a career in international business and economic affairs. Trained as an economist, he began his professional life as an economic attache at the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, before becoming a foreign-exchange trader and analyst at Bank Hapoalim. These early experiences shaped a habit of reading business questions in their institutional and cross-border context.
A U.S. national based in New York with a regular presence in Japan, Scott has advised clients across six continents, including in Japan, and brings to SDI a practical understanding of how intellectual property questions emerge inside the larger strategic choices that Japanese companies face in cross-border operations.
He is admitted to the New York and Washington State Bars. He holds a Juris Doctor from Tulane Law School, a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.
Innovation & International Growth
At SDI, Julien du Tertre advises on strategic decisions related to international growth in innovation-driven sectors.
Most recently a Senior Director at Capgemini Invent in Paris, Julien led the Growth Strategy & Innovation practice before relocating to Tokyo in 2025. Earlier, he led multidisciplinary teams at IDEO and Fahrenheit 212, and spearheaded the integration of Fahrenheit 212 into frog, part of Capgemini Invent in France.
Across these roles, he advised C-level executives in Financial Services, Technology, Life Sciences, and Retail, at moments when new growth initiatives required clear strategic commitments. His clients ranged from global corporates and scale-ups to investors active in innovation-driven growth.
At SDI, Julien advises on strategic decisions that hinge on the ability to read innovation accurately: the strategic and commercial value of a technology or business model, the maturity of an emerging market, and the realism of a growth narrative.
A French national, Julien is a scholar of the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm) and holds an MBA from the Collège des Ingénieurs. Fluent in French, English, and German, he has lived and worked in Paris, London, Berlin, Shanghai, Chicago, and Tokyo.
International Markets
At SDI, Marjorie San Pedro advises companies on pursuing opportunities financed by development banks worldwide and on international expansion into ASEAN and the United States.
She has advised international companies helping them assess market potential, understand government and regulatory environments, and determine whether the conditions for success are in place. As a Trade Advisor at Business France, within the French Embassy in the Philippines, she led the organization’s engagement with the Asian Development Bank and helped develop a partnership pipeline that generated more than US$90 million in contracts across the technology, infrastructure, and enterprise sectors.
She previously worked at DFI Consulting Inc., an international advisory firm, where she helped Fortune 500 companies establish operations and develop business across ASEAN in sectors including technology, infrastructure, security, life sciences, and energy. She began her career as a staff member of the Asian Development Bank, working across the education and health sectors and contributing to country partnership strategies, lending operations, and technical assistance.
At SDI, Marjorie draws on this experience to assess international markets beyond commercial potential, weighing the institutions and public mandates that determine which opportunities are real.
A dual national of the United States and the Philippines, Marjorie is based in California and maintains a regular presence in the Philippines. She holds a master’s degree in public policy from the KDI School in South Korea. She is fluent in English and Filipino and has lived and worked in Manila, Washington, D.C., Paris, Seoul, and Los Angeles.
