Community Highlights: Meet Will Akana of Volition Maximus

Today we’d like to introduce you to Will Akana.

Hi Will, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Well howdy! I go by Volition, and I’m a voice actor and content creator in Los Angeles. Most of what I do traces back to my little sister, Kristina, who I lost as a teen. Growing up, before we even knew what it was called, we were improv fanatics. We’re talking winter blanket forts-turned-Arctic expeditions, Australian accents, wacky musicals about chickens, all while our parents were yelling at us to go to bed. We were best friends. When I was 14, I lost her to suicide. She was 13. When she left, a part of me felt like it had gone too.
Losing her taught me the deepest lesson I know: the time we have to love someone is finite. Two years later, something in me finally got sick of being so quiet and serious after her passing. I grew out my hair, left ROTC, joined Drama, and started doing my high school’s morning announcements. I couldn’t see it then, but the first thing I did after deciding to truly live was perform again, and put my voice on a loudspeaker.
When I got to college, I wrote an essay on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World that ended up getting published in a national composition textbook. Students across the country are still assigned homework on it today. Then I graduated and…drifted. From 21 to 28 I lived with my parents, smoked more than I should have, and hid behind the camera as a wedding videographer, assistant director, and camera operator, helping tell everyone’s story but my own. But something in me got sick of hiding. In 2011 I started a YouTube channel that grew to 40,000 subscribers before the word influencer existed. I acted in commercials and short films, and every time I stepped in front of the lens instead of behind it, I felt a little more like myself.
Then came 2020. On January 1st I took a vow of sobriety for the entire year, with no idea the world was about to shut down. That vow became my saving grace. While everything stood still, I finally sat with myself. I built a recording booth out of PVC pipe and sound blankets, auditioned for hours a day, and voiced anything I could get, including a five dollar pizza commercial for a shop in Philadelphia. I taught myself music production and released a six song EP by the year’s end. I remember stepping out of that makeshift booth after an hour of voicing characters and singing and realizing I was happy. Not distracted. Happy. It took me years to name what was happening in there: the kid from that bedroom was back. Voicing characters and making songs was the improv we never finished.
Voice acting became the convergence of everything: today I’m the narrator of Unseen, Goalcast’s true crime series that centers survivors, with over 100 episodes to my name. My voice has run in national campaigns for tech, home, and major food brands, on Nickelodeon in Hot Wheels commercials and in animated series on Netflix and Disney+. A friend told me her father was watching Unseen from his hospital bed in the Philippines, my voice filling the room. A mom told me her son heard me between cartoons. The voice travels farther than the body ever could, and I believe it carries our frequency with it. That’s why I live the way I do: up before dawn, meditation, training, vegan, sobriety. As above, so below. If my voice is going to enter someone’s hospital room or a child’s living room, I’m responsible for what it carries.
Today it all lives under one name: Volition Maximus. Volition means using your will. My given name is Will. Volition is Will realized. I run Veritas Maximus, an investigative publication built on what I learned from four years as a K-12 substitute teacher: how to translate complex subjects into something anyone can understand. I mentor performers. I’m building educational frameworks Kristina would be proud of. My life started on an expedition in a blanket fort, with my little sister. The work of my life is making sure the scene never goes quiet again.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Smooth? As velcro.
The hardest stretch came in my early thirties: a relationship that turned out to be deeply abusive, followed by a court battle built on falsehoods. Fortunately the case was dismissed when the judge saw through it, but I walked out of those two years with my savings gone and a hole in my heart that seemed permanent.
But…here’s what surprised me: that chapter taught me what unconditional love actually is. I never stopped loving that person. I just started loving myself more. I learned that most cruelty isn’t chosen; it’s a survival script written by unhealed trauma. Once I saw the script instead of a villain, I understood the attacks were never really about me, and my resentment dissolved into compassion. You can wish someone well who hurt you. And you can hold a strong boundary with someone you love more than anyone. That’s what I never understood before: boundaries aren’t the opposite of love. They’re what make it sustainable.
People assume surviving something like that makes you guarded. It didn’t make me guarded, it just made me more intentional. My tolerance for disrespect went to zero and my eye for inauthenticity is sharper than ever, but I still love people hard and I still see the best in them. I choose more carefully where I invest my trust now. So it’s not about distrust…it’s about discernment.
I studied what happened to me so deeply that therapists show up in my comments asking where I learned it all. That study became a narcissistic abuse recovery platform that’s reached millions of views, with people around the world telling me it finally helped them make sense of their own story. The thing that almost broke me became the thing I’m most qualified to teach.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Volition Maximus?
Volition Maximus is the name over everything I do, and everything I do is based on one alchemical principle: turn whatever I’m given into gold.
By trade I’m a voice actor, over a decade in. You’ve heard my work in true crime podcasts, national campaigns, Nickelodeon, Netflix, Disney+, even AI voice models. But what sets me apart is that I bring sincerity to every session. If I’m voicing a commercial about an undergrad pursuing their dreams at a university, I give it everything I’ve got, so that whoever hears it feels an inkling of courage, however subconsciously. The smallest degree of sincerity can literally be the difference between someone clicking into a higher timeline or scrolling past. That attention is what separates me: I’m not here to be a voice. I’m here to transmit an energy that empowers people. That’s also why I turn down work I can’t stand behind: no fast food, no alcohol, nothing that profits off harming animals. If my voice is going to carry energy into the world, I have to believe in where it’s going.
Beyond the booth I run Veritas Maximus, an independent investigative publication practicing forensic accountability journalism: tracing sources, following the money, and making the hidden fully seen. My reporting has been cited by major political outlets, which has been encouraging.
Different rooms, same instrument. Whether it’s a character, an investigation, or a framework, the job never changes: mean it, and make sure whatever reaches people is true.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Imagine being 28, living with your parents in the high desert of Victorville, in debt, smoking every day between freelance videography gigs. I’d been doing $20 voice overs on Fiverr for five years with almost nothing to show for it. Then my parents told me they were moving overseas, and something snapped into focus: it was time to succeed or fail hard.
So I took the biggest risk of my life. On top of the debt I already had, I dropped over ten thousand dollars on professional gear and coaching. I remember ordering a $400 audio interface on Amazon thinking, “isn’t this… stupid?” But my gut said: “burn the boats. No turning back now.” There were days I cried, feeling like there was no way out of my situation. I bet on myself anyway.
A few months later, I booked my first real commercial: $250, the most I had ever made in an hour. Three years later, I crossed into six figures.
I learned that safety is the real risk. It sinks you so slowly you don’t notice until you’re neck deep, and that’s when desperation sets in. Desperation is a terrible place to live, but it’s a hell of a launch pad.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/volitionmaximus
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/volitionmaximus
• Twitter: https://x.com/VolitionMaximus/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@VolitionMaximus
• Other: https://volitionmaximus.substack.com/