G1 Global Conference

Dr. Rochelle Ford is Chief Executive Officer of the Page Society, the premier global community of senior communication leaders. At Page, she champions the role of the Chief Communication Officer as a strategic business leader, advancing thought leadership on corporate character, trust, and stakeholder engagement worldwide.
A seasoned executive and educator, Rochelle previously served as President of Dillard University, Dean of Elon University’s School of Communications, and Chair of the Public Relations Department at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, where she built programs recognized nationally for excellence.
Her global perspective includes work in West Africa, Europe, and Kenya, and she continues to advise leaders on responsible communication, DEI, and societal impact. Honored with the Page Distinguished Service Award and induction into the PRWeek Hall of Fame, she is committed to equipping communicators everywhere to navigate today’s complex business landscape.

Yasuharu Sasaki, known as Yasu, began working at dentsu as a copywriter in 1995.
Drawing on his skills as a Computer Science graduate he was an early pioneer of interactive advertising.
His passion for creativity and technology has been a marked characteristic throughout his career, notably when he founded cutting edge R&D offering, Dentsu Lab Tokyo in 2014.
His time at dentsu, which has included working in New York as an Executive Creative Director and Managing Director at dentsu Tokyo, has seen Yasu deliver work for global clients including Uniqlo, Honda and Coca-Cola.
In October 2023 Yasu was named dentsu’s Global Chief Creative Officer, responsible for leading dentsu’s global Creative Practice, including Dentsu Creative.
He sets the standard for creative excellence and is key to building a culture of creativity and innovation across the whole of dentsu.

John Short is a communications professional with over twenty years of experience in strategic in-house and agency roles.

In his role at LIXIL, he leads Communications and Impact Strategy, overseeing the function globally. His responsibilities include corporate communications, culture and engagement, brand communications, and impact strategy.

In this role he has been instrumental in establishing the companys innovative purpose and impact agenda, including the ambitious shared value partnership with UNICEF to help tackle global sanitation and hygiene challenges.

Prior to joining LIXIL, John was Head of Communications at Hitachi Automotive Systems, and previously a Partner at KREAB.

Kym White is the Chief Corporate Affairs Officer of Generate:Biomedicines. She brings deep experience in corporate affairs and healthcare communications, having held leadership roles at companies spanning the healthcare sector and global communications agencies.  

She most recently spent three years in the Alphabet ecosystem as a senior advisor to Verily and Isomorphic Labs, two of Alphabet’s “bets” in healthcare. Previously, Kym was Chief Communications Officer (CCO) for a number of public companies including CVS Health,
Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and Baxter. An agency veteran, Kym was the Global Sector Chair for Health at Edelman, the world's largest public relations firm, and held the same role at Ogilvy earlier in her career.

Kym is a member of the board of directors of Public Policy Holding Co. (PPHC), a group of bipartisan government relations and public affairs firms. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, with a B.S. in communications and political science.

Ross Rowbury is Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of Group Corporate Communications at Nomura Holdings. He has observed Japan while living and working here for four decades. Commencing his career in finance in Tokyo in the early 1980s, he later moved into public relations and communications, holding senior positions at Gavin Anderson & Co. (now Kreab) and PRAP Japan. He headed the Edelman business in Japan for 10 years until July 2020. Prior to joining Nomura in October he was a freelance consultant to a number of firms on their Japan business strategy. He is also visiting professor of Asian marketing at Doshisha University in Kyoto and is on the Board of TELL a suicide prevention and mental health NPO.

Glen S. Fukushima is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C. think tank.  In October 2021, President Joseph R. Biden nominated him to be Vice Chairman of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, and the U.S. Senate confirmed him in April 2022.  After practicing law, he served as Director for Japanese Affairs (1985-88) and Deputy Assistant United States Trade Representative for Japan and China (1988-90) at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), Executive Office of the President. From 1990 to 2012, he was based in Tokyo as a senior business executive with one European and four American multinationals and was elected to two terms as President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the Asia Society’s Global Council. A third-generation Japanese American raised in California, he was educated at Deep Springs College, Stanford University, Harvard University, Keio University, and the University of Tokyo, where he was a Fulbright Fellow.

Mark Kennedy is Director of the Wahba Initiative for Strategic Competition at New York University, where he leads global policy initiatives advancing freedom through geoeconomic statecraft, trusted technology alliances, and strategic infrastructure. A former U.S. Congressman and President of the University of Colorado and the University of North Dakota, he has led across government, business, and academia.
Kennedy served on the White House Advisory Council on Trade Policy and Negotiations and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a U.S. Air and Space Forces Civic Leader, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Naval Analyses. He helped Pillsbury buy and expand Hagen-Dazs and served as Treasurer of todays Macys.
He authored Shapeholders: Business Success in the Age of Activism (Columbia University Press) and has taught in over 20 countries on five continents. His commentary has appeared in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and CNN.

Kazuto Suzuki is Professor of Science and Technology Policy at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and Director of the Institute of Geoeconomics at International House of Japan.
He graduated from the Department of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University, and received Ph.D. from Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex, England.
He has worked in the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique in Paris, France as assistant researcher and the Associate Professor at the University of Tsukuba from 2000 to 2008 and served as Professor of International Politics at Hokkaido University until 2020.
He served as an expert in the Panel of Experts for Iranian Sanction Committee under the United Nations Security Council from 2013 to July 2015.
He currently serves as the President of Japan Association of International Security and Trade.
His research focuses on the conjunction of science/technology and international relations; subjects including space policy, non-proliferation, export control and sanctions.

Joshua W. Walker, PhD became President & CEO of Japan Society in December 2019. Previously, he worked at Eurasia Group, the world’s leading political risk analysis firm, where he served as global head of strategic initiatives and Japan in the Office of the President. Prior to that, he was CEO and president of the USA Pavilion of the 2017 World Expo in Astana, Kazakhstan; founding dean of the APCO Institute; and senior vice president of global programs at APCO Worldwide, a leading global strategic communications firm based in Washington, D.C. Before joining the private sector, he worked in numerous roles at various U.S. government agencies, including the State Department and the Defense Department. He is Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, and professor of Leadership and the American presidency at George Mason University and the Reagan Foundation. He was also Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and co-founded the Yale Journal of International Affairs. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Richmond, a master’s degree from Yale University, and a doctorate from Princeton University. Dr. Walker grew up in Japan where his parents still serve as missionaries, came to the United States when he was 18, and is bicultural and bilingual.

Junko Tanaka is a former journalist with NHK, Japan Broadcasting Corporation. She specializes in international affairs and has covered 3 US presidential elections in the past including the last one in 2016. She has been posted in Washington DC twice, of which, the latest one from 2012 to 2016 as Washington Bureau Chief. In addition, she has served as Sydney Bureau Chief, Director of Public Relations Department and Managing Director of NHK World-Japan.
She left NHK in 2024 and now serves as Commissioner of the Board of Audit of Japan.

Stephen is an award winning senior executive with a track record in leading large scale digital transformation and running businesses across banking and insurance. He has lived in Japan, India, China, and Singapore running global and regional Technology and Operations teams.
He has held various senior leadership roles in technology for world leading financial institutions and is an experienced independent board director for NGOs, corporates and industry bodies.
Also, he has a passion for innovation and has run and sat on panels covering topics such as Digital Health, and AI in financial services, he is an early stage investor and VC advisor.

Jerry Black is the Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer, AEON Co., Ltd.

As Aeons Chief Digital Officer, Mr. Black is responsible for AEONs Digital Transformation including AI, Agentics, Retail Media, Store Digital, Net Supermarket, Market Place, E-Commerce, Mobile Commerce, Digital marketing strategies across many AEON platforms, formats and countries.
He is a passionate multi-cultural executive, retail and technology expert and board director with a proven record of accomplishment in successful corporate transformations, governance, and technology leadership. His ability to bring both a global perspective along with his deep understanding of Japanese business and board practices enables Mr. Black to guide constructive transformations and conduct board level discussions while creating effective shareholder communications, and support. Mr. Black has successfully held significant direct line management roles including Chief Strategy Officer, CEO of ASEAN; Chief Digital Officer, CIO, and Senior EVP responsible for Supply Chain, Merchandising and Marketing.

Joined Sony Corporation in 1987. I was mainly involved in international operations in the consumer division, based in North America and Europe, and held executive positions at international offices.

I joined Microsoft Japan Ltd. in 2014 and led the Cloud market development and partner collaboration as Executive Managing Officer from 2015, and enterprise customer DX support as Senior Executive Managing Officer from 2020.

From June 2021, I joined Fujitsu Limited as Executive Vice President, leading the Uvance business with the goal of Revitalizing Japanese business and society and working to resolve various societal issues.

Starting April 2023, I became Corporate Executive Officer and Senior Executive Vice President, Head of Global Business Solutions and recently April 2024, I have been assigned as COO and Head of Global Business Solution Business Group to lead and spearhead Uvance business.

Miki Tsusaka is the president of Microsoft Japan.
Appointed in February 2023, she leads Microsofts engagement with customers, and business partners and is responsible for all product, solution, service and support offerings in Japan.
Under her leadership, she focuses on enabling the acceleration of Japan's digital transformation through Microsofts global and local expertise of our leading productivity and platform solutions.
She will also build and reinforce Microsofts reputation in Japan as a trusted partner for individuals, organizations and governments.
Prior to joining Microsoft Japan, she was a Senior Partner and Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where she worked for clients in a wide range of industries in Japan and overseas, helping them develop and implement growth strategies, improve profitability, redesign organization and promote digital transformation.
She established strategic consulting groups specializing in marketing, sales and pricing strategy development and led the expansion of BCG's service areas.
As for BCGs operation, she has been a member of the Executive Committee for two three-year terms and served as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) as well.
She was recognized by Fortune as among the 100 most powerful women in the world and in Asia in 2024.
She holds a Bachelor of AB, Government and East Asian Studies from the Harvard University, and an MBA degree from the Harvard Business School.

Yuko Akiyama currently serves as Global Executive Brand Advisor at Sanrio Co., Ltd., where she previously held the role of Managing Executive Officer and Director overseeing global brand management. She led initiatives such as the Hello Kitty 50th anniversary campaign and the development of global character strategies. Since March 2024, she has also served as a Board Director of the Japan Professional Football League (J.League).

Prior to joining Sanrio, Akiyama spent over a decade at Google. She joined the company in 2011, contributing to brand campaigns for Google+ and Android, as well as disaster recovery initiatives in Tohoku. She later became Head of Device Marketing and subsequently Head of Google Nest Product Planning, APAC, where she was responsible for product strategy and business performance across the Asia-Pacific region.

Earlier in her career, she worked at Hakuhodo and Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo, focusing on advertising and communications strategy for domestic and international clients.

Tony Elison is the Managing Director at Spotify Japan since February of 2021. His career spans over 30 years in digital media, entertainment, and music, in a variety of strategy, business development, and general management roles based in New York, Seattle, and Tokyo.  Before Spotify, he built his career journey at several world-famous companies such as MTV, Nintendo, YouTube, and The Walt Disney Company.  Today, Spotify is driving growth in Japan's evolving audio streaming market and leads the world with 696M monthly users and 276M paying subscribers (as of Sep. 2025).

Nobu Nakatake is Corporate SVP, Global Business Strategy at Sony Music Entertainment Japan (SMEJ). In his role Nobu leads business development and strategic planning in the global market in tandem with the operating companies of SMEJs 360 business such as Artist & Music, Anime & Character IP, Live Entertainment & Venues and Entertainment Solution Business, as well as being a bridge between Sony Music Group, Sony Group Corporation and SMEJ for further collaborative business opportunities.
He also serves as CEO of Antinos Management America Inc. , SMEJ 100% owning artist management and marketing company headquartered in Culver City, Los Angeles.

In his 3 decade-plus tenure in the music industry, Nobu served in various capacities including Media Promotion, A&R Marketing, Digital Business on BMG JAPAN as well as Label Head of both International Labels and Legacy Labels on SMEJ. Most recently he headed up International Marketing and spearheaded exploitations of global market for J-pop.

Graduated from the Faculty of Law, the University of Tokyo. Since joining the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in 2004, she has been engaged in planning and implementing major national initiatives, including promoting cashless payments, the “Go To” campaign, and the establishment of the Digital Agency. She previously served as Deputy Director at JETRO Los Angeles before assuming her current position.

Her professional experience covers a wide range of industrial policies, including startup support and international collaboration. During her tenure at JETRO Los Angeles, she was also responsible for policies related to entertainment industries such as manga, anime, film, and music.

I have spent my career researching novel talent management practices and their effect on employee behavior, collaboration, and performance. Presently, I am the Edward W. Conard Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, where I study two such phenomena related to the evolution of the workplace: (1) increased transparency via greater physical or digital observability of employee activities, routines, behaviors, logic, psychology, output, and/or performance leading managers to find new ways of ensuring that work gets done; and (2) increased connectivity via tools that rewire interaction to facilitate collaboration and interaction giving rise to novel work structures and creative organizational forms. I regularly explore the implications of those "future of work" trends for leadership, collaboration, organization design, and new forms of organizing in my research, writing, teaching, and speaking (see www.hbs.edu/ebernstein for details).

Claire is a bilingual (Japanese/English) business executive and international lawyer, experienced with over 30 years of cross-border transactions.  She is currently in charge of corporate communications at ITOCHU Corporation.  Her business and legal knowledge as well as her effective communication skills make her an impactful leader, especially in a global setting.  In the past, she has successfully led the North American business operation of ITOCHU as President & CEO, and the global legal affairs of ITOCHU as its General Counsel.  In 2013, she became the first female executive officer of any major trading company in Japan. Claire has received several recognitions, including from the World Economic Forum, Yale University, Asia Society and the California Lawyers Association (Warren M. Christopher International Lawyer of the Year, 2018).  She is a graduate of Smith College (B.A. cum laude) and Cornell Law School (J.D.), where she serves on the advisory board.

Ken Isono is the founder and CEO of Shizen Energy Inc., a company driving the transition to renewable energy across Japan and Asia since 2011. Under his leadership, Shizen Energy has supported renewable energy projects in more than 10 countries, with a vision to expand to 50 countries by 2030.

Recognized as Entrepreneur of the Year 2024 by Forbes Japan, Ken is also the creator of SUMU, a regenerative architecture project on Yakushima Island that earned more than 15 international design awards in 2023.

Beyond his work in energy and design, Ken is the 15th-generation inheritor of his familys 350-year Japanese tea tradition, Sekishu Ryu, rooted in samurai heritage. He also serves on the director at The Katsushika Hokusai Museum in Nagano, reflecting his dedication to both sustainability and the preservation of traditional culture.

Bob Willen is the Global Managing Partner and Chairman of Kearney, a global management consulting firm. With more than 25 years of experience, he has led enterprise transformations across the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. Prior to becoming Global Managing Partner, he served as Chair of Kearney's Middle East & Africa region for nine years, driving consistent growth and key strategic initiatives. Earlier in his career, he served as Global Leader for Kearney's Government and Economic Development practice, and before that, he led Kearney's global Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Transportation, and Infrastructure practices. He holds an MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, an MS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BA in Physics from the University of Virginia.

Wakana leads LinkedIns Japan business which includes Talent solutions, Learning and Marketing solutions of the worlds largest online professional network since March 2023.
Prior to LinkedIn, she managed Google's Ad sales for strategic accounts, creating innovative digital strategy & solutions for Japanese partners.
She started her career in management consulting, and later managed the Lancome brand as a Marketing Manager in L'Oreal.
Following the 3.11 Earthquake, she joined the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Investigation Commission to lead the International Affairs.
After she ran Change Management at GlaxoSmithkline Japan, she joined Google in 2014.
She has a Bachelor of Science from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and an MBA from Harvard Business School (Class of 2003).
She is also a certified Coach, Former President of Harvard Business School Club of Japan, as well as Senior Advisor for Georgetown University Alumni Club of Japan.
She grew up in Tokyo, Kobe, Jakarta, studied and worked in the US, Japan, and France.
She is a passionate traveler, dancer and mom of 2 children.

Emma Chanlett-Avery is Deputy Director of the Asia Society Policy Institute's Washington, DC office and the Director for Political-Security Affairs. Emma leads Congressional outreach and directs ASPIs policy engagement on Indo-Pacific alliances. Previously, she served for 20 years at the Congressional Research Service. In 2023, she served as a Congressional Fellow on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She was a Presidential Management Fellow, with rotations in the State Department on the Korea Desk and with the Department of Defense in Thailand. She is a recipient of the Kato Prize. Emma serves as Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Japan-America Societies, Counselor of the Board of the Japan-America Society of Washington, DC, and a Trustee of International Student Conferences, Inc. Ms. Chanlett-Avery received an MA in international security policy from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and her BA in Russian studies from Amherst College.

Kenneth Cukier is deputy executive editor of The Economist, following two decades at the newspaper as a technology writer, Japan correspondent, data editor and commentary editor. He is the coauthor of the NYT bestselling book “Big Data”, which was translated into over 20 languages, and “Framers” on AI and mental models. He is an honorary fellow at the Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM) at the International University of Japan.

Earlier, Kenn was the technology editor of the Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong and worked at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. He was previously a research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Oxford’s Saïd Business School. Kenn has served on the boards of directors of International Bridges to Justice and Chatham House. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Tomoyuki FURUTANI is a professor of emerging technology and security at Keio University, Faculty of Policy Management. He is an advisor of Defense Technology Foundation. His research interests are mainly on AI, data science, autonomous vehicles.
Recent publications: ‘Drones Changing Warfare’(co-edited, 2022), “Security in the Digital Transformation Era: The Accelerating Military Use of AI and the New International Order“ in ‘After the Ukraine Crisis: Choices for the International Community and Japan’ (2025)
He obtained Dr. Eng. at the University of Tokyo in 2001. He lectured two years at University of Tokyo as a research associate (2001-2003), four years as a lecturer at Keio University (2003-2007), eight years as an associate professor at Keio (2007-2015) and now works as a full professor (2015-present). He used to be a visiting researcher at University of Vienna, Austria, and a visiting professor in Chulalongkorn University, Thailand in 2018-2019.

Dr. Ken Jimbo is a Professor of International Relations at Keio University and a Managing Director of Programs at the International House of Japan (IHJ/I-House). He is concurrently an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS). He served as a Special Advisor to the Japan Ministry of Defense in 2020 and Senior Advisor to the National Security Secretariat from 2018 to 2020.

His main research interests lie in International Security, Japan-U.S. Security Relations, and Japan’s Foreign and Defense Policy. He has served as a policy advisor for various Japanese governmental commissions and research groups, including the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. His policy writings have been published by the RAND Corporation, NBR, the Stimson Center, the Pacific Forum CSIS, Japan Times, Nikkei, Yomiuri, Asahi, and Sankei Shimbun.

Akari Asai is a Research Scientist at AI2 and an incoming Assistant Professor at CMU. Her work focuses on LLMs, specifically building and applying Augmented LMs such as Retrieval-Augmented LMs and LLM agents. Her work earned paper awards, the IBM Global Fellowship, industry grants, and recognition as MIT TR35, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, and EECS Rising Stars.

Dr. Sakyasingha Dasgupta is the Founder & CEO of EdgeCortix, a fabless AI semiconductor company pioneering energy-efficient edge intelligence. An AI and machine learning technologist with over a decade of experience, he has transformed cutting-edge research into scalable products across sectors including semiconductors, robotics, autonomous systems, and fintech.

He previously led teams at Microsoft, IBM Research Japan, and national research labs such as RIKEN (Japan) and the Max Planck Institute (Germany), before helping establish technology divisions at startups in Japan and Singapore. In 2019, he founded EdgeCortix in Tokyo, introducing a patented hardware & software co-exploration approach to design AI-specific reconfigurable processors. Today, the company drives next-generation AI solutions across defense, aerospace, telecom, and smart industries.

Dr. Dasgupta holds a PhD in Physics of Complex Systems (Max Planck, Germany), an MSc in AI (University of Edinburgh), and has completed entrepreneurship studies at MIT Sloan. He holds 25+ patents globally.

Shixiang Shane Gu is a Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, leading a subteam in Gemini Thinking.
He previously led Multilinguality Post-Training team for Gemini, worked on ChatGPT at OpenAI, and led a robot dexterity project as a Research Scientist at Google Brain.
Shane has made significant contributions to generative modeling, reinforcement learning, robotics, and language modeling.
He holds a PhD in Machine Learning from Cambridge, and a B.ASc. from the University of Toronto, advised by Geoffrey Hinton.
Shane has also held visiting positions at Stanford and the University of Tokyo.
Beyond his research, he angel invests and advises several AI startups across the US.
Born in Japan to Chinese parents, Shane is a Canadian citizen fluent in three languages.

Dr. Richard Dasher has been Director of the US-Asia Technology Management Center and Adjunct Faculty at Stanford University since 1994.  His research focuses on the impact of new technologies on industry value chains, open innovation management, and regional innovation ecosystems in different countries.  He concurrently served as Executive Director of Stanford’s Center for Integrated Systems (1998 - 2015) and as an outside Board Director and member of the Management Council of Tohoku University (2004 - 2010).   Dr Dasher is also a Founding Partner of Global Hands-On Venture Capital (GHOVC), and he advises business accelerators, startup companies, and think-tanks in the U.S., Canada, and several Asian countries. He is on the evaluation and review committees of several major science and technology funding programs, such as the WPI Program of MEXT/JSPS.  He received the Japanese Foreign Minister’s Commendation in 2023 for long-term promotion of economic relations between Japan and the U.S.A.

Digital Architect, venture capitalist, entrepreneur, author, and scholar. He works to respond to complex challenges such as education, our democracy and governance, and redesigning systems of scholarship and science. He has served as Director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and as a director of Sony and The New York Times. He is a member of the Digital Agency's Digital Society Planning Council. He is a co-chair of the Committee on Digital Transformation in the Corporate Sector at the Japan Association of Corporate Executives. He is also the Co-founder of Neurodiversity School in Tokyo. He is the author of many books, including “Neurodiversity” (Japanese/Forbes Japan),  "AI-Driven” (Japanese/SB Shinsho), “(Revised Edition) Technology as a Culture” (Japanese/Kodansha), and “Whiplash”(English/Grand Central)..　 Ito is currently working on a book titled “Practice of Change” based on his Keio University PhD dissertation with the same name.

Noah Sneider is The Economist's East Asia Bureau Chief. He primarily covers Japan, North Korea and South Korea. He also contributes to coverage of China, Taiwan, the Pacific and the Philippines and to broader thematic coverage of Asia. Prior to this he led the papers coverage of Japan as Tokyo Bureau Chief. He also covered Russia and Ukraine as Moscow Correspondent. Before joining The Economist, he reported for a range of publications, including The New York Times, Harpers, and The Atlantic, among others. His work has been anthologized in the Best American Travel Writing series. He is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship. He is a member of the third generation in his family to live and work in Japan and Korea.

Ema Ryan Yamazaki is a Japanese/British documentary filmmaker based in Tokyo, with roots in New York. With a unique perspective as an insider and outsider in Japan, Ema strives to tell stories that empathetically show human struggle and triumph.

Ema is the Director of INSTRUMENTS OF A BEATING HEART and Editor of BLACK BOX DIARIES, which were both nominated for the Academy Awards in 2025. She has directed three acclaimed feature documentaries; THE MAKING OF A JAPANESE, KOSHIEN: JAPAN'S FIELD OF DREAMS, and MONKEY BUSINESS: THE ADVENTURES OF CURIOUS GEORGE'S CREATORS

Yumiko Murakami General Partner, MPower Partners Fund L.P. Yumiko is the former head of the OECD Tokyo Centre. Prior to the OECD, she worked for 20 years in the global financial industry, mostly as a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs in New York, London and Tokyo. She is a leading authority on a wide range of economic policy issues such as corporate governance, tax guidelines, diversity, education, trade and innovation. She sits on several Government advisory panels, including Prime Minister Kishida’s panel on “the New Form of Capitalism”. Yumiko has an MBA from Harvard Business School, MA from Stanford University and BA from Sophia University.

Naonori Kimuras activities include numerous advisory services such as corporate strategies including breakthroughs, strategy shifts and re-growth initiatives. He has advised clients on business management streamlining, structural reforms, financial strategy, new business development, M&A strategies, and cost competitiveness. He is currently Chairman & President of IGPI (Shanghai) Ltd. and outside director of Molten Corporation, and LIFULL Co., Ltd. He is also Advisory board member of The Japan Times ESG consortium.
Prior to IGPI, he launched a venture business, worked with NCR Japan and later at Towers Perrin and Arthur D. Little Japan.
He graduated from Keio University, School of Economics, and holds an MBA from the University of Leicester and an MS in Finance from the Lancaster University. He also completed AMP in Harvard Business School.

Terry Nakatsuka started his career at Marubeni Corporation, then moved to McKinsey & Company, followed by GE Corporate and GE Aviation. Terry served as President & CEO at JATCO Ltd. in 2014-2021, then currently President & Group CEO at Altemira Holdings Co., Ltd. since 2022. Terry holds B.A. in Business at Keio University and MBA at Northwestern University.

Ulrike Schaede is professor of Japanese business at the University of California San Diego. Her research focuses on global business and Japanese business organization, strategy and management. Her book The Business Reinvention of Japan (in Japanese: Saiko THE KAISHA) won the 2021 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. In 2024, she published Japan Re-Emerges (in Japanese: Shin Nihon no Keiei). Professor Schaede holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Germany, and has been a visiting professor at UC Berkeley, Harvard Business School, Stanford University, and Hitotsubashi University. She is Associate Editor of The Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, and serves on the Advisory Boards of NBR Asia in Seattle, and the IGPI Group in Tokyo, among others. Her website is www.ulrikeschaede.com.

Prior to GLOBIS, Mr. Tomoya Nakamura worked at Marubeni Corporation, reorganized an invested company at Advantage Partners, and was the senior managing director of Sun-Life Corporation (JASDAQ). At Sun-Life, he introduced a progressive ESOP for more than 250 employees, including part-time workers.
At GLOBIS, Mr. Nakamura has overseen global businesses. He launched the English MBA programs at the Graduate School of Management, GLOBIS University, started GLOBIS USA and the global training business, for which he served as the main facilitator for many clients. He is currently the Managing Director of KIBOW (Social Impact Investment) Fund.
Mr. Nakamura graduated from Hitotsubashi University with a degree in social studies and received his MBA from Harvard Business School. As a research associate of the General Management Unit of Harvard Business School, Mr. Nakamura wrote two HBS cases that apply Eastern philosophy to management.

Oya Koc is the Founder & CEO of Oyraa Inc., a Tokyo-based startup offering on-demand remote interpretation services. Oyraa supports both individuals (e.g. foreigners living in Japan) who face language barriers in daily life, and businesses that require real-time multilingual communication.

Prior to founding Oyraa, Oya worked at Boston Consulting Group (Tokyo), focusing on digital transformation and M&A projects. She holds a master's degree in Engineering from The University of Tokyo.

She also serves as an advisor to Japans Ministry of Economy for the 2025 Osaka Expo and is a board member of JAEFN (Japan Association for the Employment of Foreign Nationals). Oya was named Woman of the Year by Nikkei in 2024 and is an active advocate for multicultural inclusion in government and nonprofit initiatives.

Ms. Matsukawa had worked at MOFA for 23 years at various posts including in Japan-ASEAN cooperation, Japan-China-Korea cooperation, International law affairs, and women’s empowerment. Her overseas posts include: at the Mission of Japan to the Conference on Disarmament (Geneva), The Deputy-Secretary General of the Information Corporations Service (Seoul). In 2016, she left MOFA and got elected as senator. She served as Parliamentary Secretary of Defense from 2020-21. Member of Foreign policy and defense committee. Deputy DG of International Bureau  at LDP. In July 2022, she got elected for the second time.

Attorney (Tokyo Bar), immigration-registered lawyer, labor & social security attorney, and administrative scrivener. Former lecturer at Keio University Law School, Nagoya University (Vietnam), and visiting fellow at Hanoi Law University. After working at Anderson Mori & Tomotsune, currently Managing Partner at Global HR Strategy LPC, Representative Partner at the Institute for Foreign Employment, and JICA expert on foreign employment and immigration law. Serves major corporate groups (100+ companies) in legal matters on foreign worker admission, placement, dispatch, and compliance. Has delivered hundreds of seminars on foreign employment, appeared on NHK and TBS programs, and is frequently quoted in leading media such as Nikkei and Asahi.

Robert Alan Feldman is Senior Advisor to the Research Department of Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities, and is an External Director on the board of Tokio Marine Holdings. A leading voice on the Japanese economy, he was a regular commentator on TV Tokyo’s World Business Satellite from 2000-20. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT. He first came to Japan as an exchange student in high school.

Joined Robotruck in 2025 and became the director and CEO.

Prior to joining Robotruck, I joined SkyDrive as COO.  I covered the overall business related to flying cars and drones, engaged in business strategy formulation, external relations activities, product planning, partnership development, Osaka Kansai Expo projects, etc.

Before joining SkyDrive, I joined Mitsubishi Corporation. In the automotive business, he was engaged in sales of Isuzu Motors to Southeast Asia (stationed in Thailand and Malaysia). After returning to Japan, I was engaged in new business development in Aerospace industry, such as establishment of JVs with large companies, and investment in start-ups.

Jeff Harper, Co-Founder, EVP and Chief Commercial Officer of ZettaJoule, brings a depth of wealth and experience with over 40-plus years of global experience in nuclear reactor innovation, commercialization, and regulatory compliance. Previously, as Vice President at X-energy, he led strategic planning and secured more than $2.4 billion in U.S. Department of Energy funding. Jeff has negotiated international reactor agreements and built partnerships with key industry leaders, including Dow Chemical and Energy Northwest. He also led Westinghouse's Advanced Reactor Development Program and played a pivotal role in licensing the AP1000 reactor. As an NRC inspector, his investigation into faulty fasteners prompted the 1990 Fastener Quality Act. Jeff founded Turner, Harper & Associates, a 100-person global engineering firm, and has held advisory roles in U.S. and international nuclear trade organizations. He holds an MBA from Harvard and a B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering and founded The Harper Academy to train the next generation of nuclear engineers.

Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Oceanic Constellations Inc., a company advancing ocean monitoring through autonomous surface drone vessels. A graduate of the University of Tokyos Faculty of Law (2001), he began his career at Goldman Sachs Japan, gaining deep financial expertise, followed by leadership at Symphony Financial Partners. In 2008, he founded Xebral Co., Ltd., marking his entrepreneurial debut. In 2023, he co-founded Oceanic Constellations, combining his legal acumen, financial background, and entrepreneurial drive to pioneer technological innovation in maritime solutions.

Yoshimi (Iyadomi) Shinohara founded the U.S. subsidiary of Persol Holdings, part of the worlds sixth-largest staffing firm, with $10+ billion in revenue and publicly traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (2181.T).
Specializing in technology-focused recruitment, the subsidiary grew through multiple M&As, strategic investments in tech startups, and the launch of an AI-first talent marketplace, driving substantial business expansion.
In 2022, with a commitment to advancing digital transformation with AI, Shinohara co-established the AI Institute D^3 at Harvard Business School, contributing to global research and leadership education in AI transformation.
Additionally, through the Shinohara Foundation, which aims to 'maximize peoples well-being,' she supports initiatives focused on improving productivity and working conditions in Japan, advancing social impact with a focus on workforce well-being and sustainable growth.

Emre is General Partner at Globis Capital Partners. He invests primarily in domestic IT startups focused on industrial transformation (digital transformation), typically from the Pre-A/Series A funding rounds and provides hands-on support, partnering closely with portfolio companies throughout their growth. Emre graduated from Harvard Business School (MBA).

Ken Chan is the Founder, CEO and CIO of Patience Capital Group. Prior to PCG, Ken was GIC Japans Country Head, where he looked after Real Estate and Integrated Strategies Investments. Over his 19-year career with GIC, Ken built up a core portfolio of real estate assets across the office, residential, retail, logistics and hospitality sectors, in addition to assisting GIC with its other investments in equities, private equities and infrastructure. His vast network in Japan and Asia also helped GIC establish a strong brand name and build up investments in various financial assets across different industries.

I spent my elementary school years in Ise-Shima, high school in Kawagoe, ICU for university, worked at Mikimoto for 3 years and have now worked at KAKUDA Pearl, my family business, for 30 years. I've served as president for half of that time.
My hotel COVA KAKUDA reflects my desire to immerse guests in the unique charm of our region. I feel a strong responsibility to contribute to the pearl industry and play an active role in my community. Our hotels value comes not only from local cuisine and beautiful landscapes, but also from meaningful interactions with residents, experiencing local culture, and enjoying the everyday atmosphere. Although I do not have a traditional background in hospitality business, I believe this allows me to offer fresh perspectives and create services that are truly unique. By working with local people, I aspire to cultivate memorable and distinctive experiences for our guests.

Chef /Satoyama Jujo
Gaulmillau Terroir Award winning chef Keiko Kuwakino is recognized as being at the top of her field of “local gastronomy”. She is currently chef of Michelin starred “Sanaburi” restaurant in the boutique hotel of “Satoyama Jujo” located in the snowy mountains of Niigata, Japan.
Constantly in search of new ideas and techniques, Keiko frequently travels to sample exotic dishes. While at home in Niigata, she collects local ingredients from nearby mountains and communities. The integration and respect of local culture and nature is pivotal to her cuisine.
Previous to working at Satoyama Jujo, Keiko trained in vegetarianism, yoga and Ayurveda. Her diverse skills and interests continue to inform her nature inspired, local gastronomy.

As a senior partner with KEARNEY, a global management consultancy, Umezawa has served leading corporations in Japan and the US for more than 25 years. Areas of his expertise include strategy, innovation, urban development, and organization.

At Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), he has led the efforts to launch and develop CIC Tokyo, Japan's largest innovation center. CIC is the worlds leading operator of shared office/lab facilities for startups, operating innovation centers in 10 cities worldwide. CIC Tokyo, opened in 2020, is a host for 330 companies and several innovation clusters, including life sciences and climate tech. CIC Fukuoka was recently launched as CIC's second campus in Asia.

Umezawa also sits on government committees on innovation and intellectual property strategy, tourism, and creative industry development. He holds a bachelor of law from the University of Tokyo and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Director of Gallup Japan, Heading the business growth and impact. Been with Gallup for 17 years, previously was the Regional director for Australia, NZ and South Asia. Prior to that i was the Head of Consulting for our Middle East division and prior to that headed our market in Thailand. My role is that of change management, growth and most importantly I am a consultant and heart, so my biggest responsibility is client impact.

Vickie Skorji
Director of TELL Lifeline Services,
TELL Japan a Japanese NPO that has been supporting the International community in Japan since 1973.
Vickie has a Masters in Counselling from Monash University and a Behavioural Sciences degree with honours from La Trobe University, Australia, along with specialist training in neuropsychology and Acquired Brain Injury in hospital and rehabilitation settings.
Over the last 18 years at TELL, she has worked as a trainer, clinical therapist and Lifeline Director. She has also developed a wide range of suicide prevention and mental health awareness programs for schools, the workplace, and the community, including stress management, work-life balance, cultural adjustment, dementia care, disaster preparedness, and psychological first aid training.
More recently, she developed workshops and programs to assist schools, workplaces, and community groups in addressing the challenges of COVID-19, both during and after the pandemic. These programs focused on managing burnout and compassion fatigue, as well as building resilience. Additionally, she created programs to support evacuees in adjusting to life in Japan.

Dr. Tadahiro Wakasugi is Senior Faculty Director at GLOBIS, specializing in leadership development and the integration of compassion and well-being into organizations. He previously worked in strategy consulting at Booz Allen Hamilton, supporting corporate strategy and transformation for Japanese and multinational firms, and also gained experience in the education technology sector in London. He serves on the board of the Japan Positive Psychology Association and is a certified teacher of Mindful Self-Compassion and Compassion Cultivation Training, helping professionals enhance resilience, engagement, and well-being. He earned a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) from Hitotsubashi University, an MBA from London Business School, and a bachelors and a masters degree in engineering from the University of Tokyo.

Makiko is the Director of Yell since 2020, bringing her expertise in business strategy and a passion for effective communication. As an accomplished speaker and thought leader, she delves into the significance of listening and dialogue within the contemporary business landscape. Makiko's contributions extend beyond speaking engagements, as she has co-translated influential works such as "You're not listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters" by Kate Murphy and "The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age" by Reid Hoffman et al.

Prior to her current role, Makiko served as the CFO of Hobonichi, where she successfully led the company through its IPO process. Her diverse career encompasses finance leadership positions at renowned organizations like Novartis and Nestle, in addition to her experience gained at McKinsey & Company. Makiko's academic background includes an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, an MA in International Relations from SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, and a Bachelor of Economics from Keio University.

Dr. Mohamed Al Busaidi was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Sultanate of Oman to Japan in 2018. Prior to assuming his duties, Ambassador Al Busaidi started his career as a Professor of Physics at Sultan Qaboos University joining the Foreign Ministry in 2009 and held prominent positions such as the Chief of the North American Affairs Department.  His Excellency Dr. Mohamed Al Busaidi is also the Non-resident Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Sultanate of Oman to Australia, and New Zealand.

Ali Al Lawati is the Chief People & Technology Officer at OQ, bringing 20 years of experience, including over 10 internationally. His focus is on strategic growth and developing human capital by driving portfolio diversification and in-country value creation through industry localization, SME development, and attracting investments to boost local talent and job creation.

Previously, as the Global HR Director – Corporate at SLB, Ali oversaw Technology, HR, Legal, Finance, and Strategy across corporate offices in Paris, London, and Houston. Before that, as the Regional Managing Director for SLB (Oman and Pakistan), he managed over 3,000 employees, defining long-term strategy and operational excellence. Notably, he established a strategic anchor investor relationship with Abraj Energy Services to create the largest integrated operational base in Oman. He also pioneered alternative energy initiatives, such as evaluating geothermal applications, directly supporting Oman’s sustainability goals. He holds a B.S. in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering.

Ambassador Ret.
Mr. Saito was the Japanese Ambassador to Oman and Iran and is now a Guest Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University in Kobe. He was born in 1957 and graduated from Hitotsubashi University in 1980. He also studied at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford University in the UK, and the Middle East Institute at Columbia University in the US. He served at the Foreign Ministry of Japan from 1980 to 2020. He is an expert on the Middle East, particularly the Gulf region, as well as intelligence and national security issues (He was Cabinet Councilor for National Security and Crisis Management at the time of the Great East Japan earthquake). He was posted to various countries in the Middle East, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Oman, and Iran. Now he teaches at some universities and also contributes analytical reports on the Middle East to the Okazaki Institute weekly.      

Prof. Keiko SAKAI is a professor at Chiba University and Director of Center for Relational Studies on Global Crises.
While she worked as a researcher in the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE), she served as a research attach in the Embassy of Japan in Iraq in the late 80s, and served as the overseas researcher at the American University in Cairo in the 90s. Since 2005, Sakai took on the position of Professor at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, then moves to Chiba University in 2012.
She has published works on contemporary Iraq and the Middle East, such as Iraq Since Invasion (co-editor, Routledge, 2020). Her latest edited book Gaza Nakba 20232024 Background, Context, Consequences was published from Springer in Feb. 2025.

Toru Takahashi is Global Chief Strategy Officer at GLOBIS Europe BV, based in Brussels, Belgium. Under his leadership, GLOBIS offers Pre-MBA courses and global leadership training for corporate clients across the EMEA region. He also imparts his wisdom on Global Perspectives and Entrepreneurial Leadership in GLOBIS University's MBA program. Renowned for his corporate training expertise, Takahashi conducts seminars on developing corporate strategy during overseas expansion and leadership for localizing overseas sites.
Before joining GLOBIS, he spent eight years on overseas assignments with Marubeni Corporation, spearheading infrastructure projects in Iran and managing diverse business ventures from their EMEA regional headquarters in Belgium. Takahashi is the author of "People who get results overseas don't use cultural issues as an excuse" and co-author of "GLOBIS MBA Management Book II."
A Sophia University economics graduate, he also completed the Stanford Executive Program (SEP) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is currently a PhD candidate at the Bucharest University for Economic Studies.

Born in Tokyo in 1979. His areas of expertise include fashion design, design research, and design methodology. He earned his MA and PhD from the Royal College of Art. He has previously served as a lecturer at the Kyoto University of Art and Design Ultra Factory, a specially appointed lecturer at the Kyoto University Design School, and an associate professor at Keio Universitys Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, before assuming his current position.

Miles Pennington is professor of Design Led Innovation at The University of Tokyo, where he is Director of the unique international and multidisciplinary DLX Design Lab. The lab collaborates with researchers at the university to create value through design. Previous to the University of Tokyo he was at the Royal College of Art in London and was Head of Programme of the Innovation Design Engineering (IDE) joint Masters programme with Imperial College - he is an alumnus of the IDE programme and graduated in 1992. He was also Founder and Head of the pioneering international exchange programme Global Innovation Design (GID). In the past, in parallel to his academic work he was a Director of the innovation consultancy Design Stream and more recently Director in the London office of the international design agency Takram. He moved to Japan in September 2017 to join The University of Tokyo. Recently he was appointed as Dean (prospective) of the UTokyo College of Design

Sarah Teasley is Professor of Design at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
Through her organizational leadership, research and teaching, she aims to broaden access to design leadership, using transdisciplinary approaches and partnerships with organizations, companies and communities.
At RMIT, she contributes to the Masters in Design Innovation and Technology (MDIT) and supervises PhDs.
She served as Associate Dean for Research and Innovation (Design), 2022-2025.
Before RMIT, she was Head of Programme for History of Design at the Royal College of Art, UK.
Current projects include the Australian Emulation Network, securing our born-digital cultural heritage for the future, and peer mentoring with women leaders as part of DESIAP, Designing Entangled Social Innovation in Asia-Pacific.
She regularly consults and speak internationally on the future of design culture, research and education.
She holds degrees from Princeton, Musashino Art University and the University of Tokyo and is the author of Designing Modern Japan (2022).

Kinya is an award-winning design engineer experienced in various products, including hardware, software and interactive art. He holds a BEng from the University of Tokyo and an MA from the Royal College of Art in the UK. His work was selected as a permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was assigned as a visiting professor at the Royal College of Art from 2015 to 2018. With his contribution to the RCA, he was awarded an Honorary Fellow RCA, in 2018. Kinya is also appointed as a member of several design-related committees of the Japanese Government.

Originally a banker at The Industrial Bank of Japan, Mr. Asao is a graduate of the University of Tokyo, Faculty of Law and the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University He was elected to the House of Councilors from Kanagawa Prefecture in 1998 and has more than 20 years experience in the Japanese Diet.
During his career as the Member of the Japanese Diet, he has served as the Party head of Your Party. He has previously served as Chair, House Rules and Administrations as well as Acting Chairperson of the Policy Research Council of the Liberal Democratic Party.

Charles Goddard imagines and builds The Economist Groups flagship initiatives, the purpose of which is to catalyse progress on key issues of the day. He works closely with partners on themes including ocean health and the sustainable ocean economy, the Anthropocene, global health security, and ageing and longevity. Based in Sydney, Australia Charles was previously editorial director, Asia at the Economist Intelligence Unit, director of research in Asia, and managing director of the Economist Corporate Network, a peer network for senior executives. He is concurrently executive director of Economist Impact's World Ocean Initiative, and Back to Blue, a joint initiative with The Nippon Foundation that is building pathways to zero pollution in the ocean by 2050.

Jane Lubchenco, is University Distinguished Professor of Integrative Biology and Wayne and Gladys Valley Professor of Marine Biology at Oregon State University. From 2021-2025, she led the Climate and Environment team at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; from 2014-2016 she served as the State Departments first U.S. Science Envoy for the Ocean; from 2009-2013, she was the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  She is a marine ecologist with scientific and policy expertise in the ocean, biodiversity, climate change, and interactions between the environment and human well-being. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, among others, and has received numerous awards including a MacArthur genius Fellowship and 24 honorary doctorates (most recently from Oxford University).

Atsushi Sunami is President of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. He is also Adjunct Professor and Special Advisor to the President at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), and Guest Professor at the Research Organization for Nano & Life Innovation at Waseda University. In the Cabinet Office, he serves as a chairperson of the Okinawa Development Council, Acting chairperson and Vice-chairperson of Japanese National Commission for UNESCO, member of the Economic Security Legislation Council. He also serves as Chairman of the Committee for Examination and Evaluation of the Subsidy for Research and Study Projects on Diplomacy and Security in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He earned his BSFS from Georgetown University and MIA and Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

Founder, Chair, and CEO of Sailors for the Sea Japan, an affiliate of the US NGO for Ocean Conservation, founded by David Rockefeller, Jr. 
Ph.D. (Kyoto University Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies)
Project Researcher, Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo. Associate Professor, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature.

Christopher Ax is a founder of Schmatz, a German beer & gastropub brand. Schmatz currently operates 40 stores in Japan. The first store opened in 2015, after a year of bootstrapping with a food truck. Alongside the stores, Schmatz is growing its FMCG line (bottled and canned beer) through digital channels and retail. Christopher has a background in Venture Capital. Prior to founding Schmatz, he was a manager at German company builder Rocket Internet in Mexico and New York. At the fund, he focused on venture finance, analytics and performance marketing for the e-commerce and fin tech portfolio ventures.

Jordan Fisher is Co-Founder and Chairman of Zehitomo, Japan’s marketplace for local services. From home renovations to karaoke coaches, Zehitomo provides a platform to match with 600+ types of service professionals.
Jordan is also Venture Partner at Antler Japan, supporting and investing in ambitious founders from Day 0.
Prior to founding Zehitomo, Jordan was Vice President at J.P.Morgan in Tokyo, working in Fixed Income Technology and Equities Sales Trading.Born and raised in New York, Jordan holds a B.S. Computer Science from the University of Southern California.Outside of Zehitomo, Jordan is an active mentor to several startups. He is also a loving husband, and a father to two young daughters.

Ms. Oya Koc is the founder and CEO of Oyraa Inc, a startup, providing on-demand remote interpretation to a so-far-underserved ""individuals"" and enabling interpreters to have a global reach to find customers.

Prior to Oyraa Inc, Ms. Koc worked for The Boston Consulting Group (Tokyo office), and was mostly involved in digital transformation and M&A projects.

Ms. Koc holds a master's degree in nano-bio-engineering at The University of Tokyo.

Emre is General Partner at Globis Capital Partners, leading investments in IT startups targeting digital transformation of various industries. His portfolio includes GLM (acquired), Photosynth (TSE:4379), Sensyn Robotics, MFS, New Standard, Global Mobility Service, Shippio, CADDi, Matsuri Technologies, estie, Leaner Technologies, ascend and Facilo.

He teaches at Globis University Graduate School of Management (MBA).
Emre graduated from Harvard Business School (MBA) and Ohio State University.

George Chen is a practitioner/scholar with over two decades of expertise across media, technology, and public policy. Currently, George is Managing Director (Head of Hong Kong and Taiwan Offices) and Co-Chair of Digital Practice for The Asia Group, advising many of the world’s most important technology companies on various regulatory issues. Prior to this role, George was a founding member of Meta/Facebook's Asia Pacific public policy team and served as the company’s most senior policy leader for Greater China, Mongolia and Central Asia for over seven years.

Concurrently, George is appointed Senior Fellow at The University of Hong Kong, Visiting Scholar at National Chengchi University (Taiwan), and Yale World Fellow at Yale University. George was awarded the “Medal of Friendship” (2022) by the President of Mongolia, one of the country's highest and most rare honours for foreigners. George is a Board Member of American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong.

Scott Jarkoff is the Co-Founder & CEO of Praeryx, where he orchestrates the inception of an enigmatic new cyber threat intelligence startup set to uncover insights untouched by conventional frameworks.

Scott's journey took him through key roles at CrowdStrike, McAfee, and 25 years of U.S. government service. At CrowdStrike, Scott was the Director, Intelligence Strategy, for APJ/META. At McAfee, he introduced advanced CTI services to Japan. His government service culminated as Chief of Cyber Security for U.S. Forces Japan.

Scott's creative genius does not stop at cyber security. He is also the visionary Co-Founder and mastermind behind deviantART, the largest & most vibrant online art community the world has ever seen.

His attention is focused entirely on Praeryx, a venture destined to disrupt the very foundation of CTI. In his spare time he loves cycling, sneakers, and movies, as well as spending QT with his bohemian wife and three insane puppies.

Ms. Matsukawa had worked at MOFA for 23 years at various posts including in Japan-ASEAN cooperation, Japan-China-Korea cooperation, International law affairs, and women’s empowerment. Her overseas posts include: at the Mission of Japan to the Conference on Disarmament (Geneva), The Deputy-Secretary General of the Information Corporations Service (Seoul). In 2016, she left MOFA and got elected as senator. She served as Parliamentary Secretary of Defense from 2020-21. Member of Foreign policy and defense committee. Deputy DG of International Bureau  at LDP. In July 2022, she got elected for the second time.

Hiroshi Sasaki is a seasoned expert in industrial cybersecurity with a distinguished career spanning over 10 years. With 14 years of experience as a developer of industrial control system for a domestic manufacturing company, Hiroshi transitioned to cybersecurity industry, leveraging his extensive background to foster a culture of industrial cybersecurity. Hiroshi delivers lectures as an advisor at the Industrial Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (ICSCoE), Information-Technology Promotion Agency (IPA). Hiroshi actively involved in business activities, including public speaking, writing, and proposing solutions both domestically and internationally. Hiroshi published a book on cybersecurity in Japanese about industrial cybersecurity for manufacturing.

Current Positions:
Adviser (Part-time), Industrial Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (ICSCoE), Information-Technology Promotion Agency (IPA) (July 2017 – Present)
Visiting Associate Professor, Nagoya Institute of Technology(May 2022 – Present)
IT Security Officer (Advisor role, Part-time), Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) (May 2016 – December 2020, July 2021 – Present)
Director, OT Business Development, Fortinet Japan G.K. (August 2021 – Present)
Cybersecurity Principal, Axelspace Holdings Corporation (June 2023 – Present)

Mihoko Matsubara is Chief Cybersecurity Strategist, NTT Corporation, Tokyo, being responsible for cybersecurity thought leadership. She worked at the Japanese Ministry of Defense before her MA at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies on Fulbright. Prior to joining NTT, She served as Vice President and Public Sector Chief Security Officer for the Asia-Pacific region at Palo Alto Networks.

Mihoko has published a book on cybersecurity for business leaders and another one on cyber war in Ukraine, and both of them won an award. She is Associate Fellow for Cyber at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London; Adjunct Fellow at the Pacific Forum, Honolulu; and Non-resident Scholar at Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, Washington DC.

Jonathan Frankle is Chief AI Scientist at Databricks, where he leads the AI research team toward the goal of making it possible for everyone to customize deep learning to meet their needs (from prompting to creating entire models from scratch). He arrived via Databricks’ $1.3B acquisition of MosaicML, where he was part of the founding team. He recently completed his PhD at MIT, during which he empirically studied deep learning with Prof. Michael Carbin, specifically the properties of sparse networks that allow them to train effectively (his "Lottery Ticket Hypothesis" - ICLR 2019 Best Paper). In addition to his technical work, he is actively involved in policymaking around challenges related to artificial intelligence. He earned his BSE and MSE in computer science at Princeton and has previously spent time at Google Brain and Facebook AI Research as an intern and at Georgetown Law as a technologist and Adjunct Professor of Law.

Kae Nemoto is a professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology and the Center Director for OIST Center for Quantum Technologies.
She is also a professor at the National Institute of Informatics (NII) in Tokyo, where she serves as the director of the Global Research Center for Quantum Information Science and the co-director of the Japanese-French Laboratory for Informatics (JFLI).
Her research is focused on applications for quantum computers, quantum machine learning, quantum computer architectures, quantum middleware, quantum networks, quantum internet and complex systems.
She also leads an academic education consortium "Quantum Academy for Science and Technology" to provide high quality lectures and education materials for undergraduate and graduate levels in this field.
She is a Fellow of both the IoP (UK) and the APS (US).

Takao Someya is Executive Director and Vice President and Professor at the University of Tokyo. Additionally, he serves as Director General of the Division of University Corporate Relations, with oversight of startup initiatives. He is recognized as an inventor of electronic skins, which was featured in TIME Magazine as one of the best inventions of the year in 2005. He earned his doctorate in engineering from the University of Tokyo and held additional positions as Global Scholar at Princeton University, GlobalFoundaries Visiting Professor at National University of Singapore, and Hans Fisher Senior Fellow at Technical University of Munich. He served as Dean of Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, AY2020-2022. He is the 2024 President of the Materials Research Society (MRS) in the US.

Yumiko Murakami General Partner, MPower Partners Fund L.P. Yumiko is the former head of the OECD Tokyo Centre. Prior to the OECD, she worked for 20 years in the global financial industry, mostly as a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs in New York, London and Tokyo. She is a leading authority on a wide range of economic policy issues such as corporate governance, tax guidelines, diversity, education, trade and innovation. She sits on several Government advisory panels, including Prime Minister Kishida’s panel on “the New Form of Capitalism”. Yumiko has an MBA from Harvard Business School, MA from Stanford University and BA from Sophia University.

Ari Horie is a Silicon Valley innovator, global speaker and thought leader in women’s leadership and entrepreneurship. In recent years, she has also become known for corporate innovation and leadership and speaking about the entrepreneurial mindset for executives.

She is the Founder & CEO of a leading accelerator, Women’s Startup Lab (WSLab), a uniquely designed program for women entrepreneurs with tech startups. Attracting top influencers in the valley, WSLab has been a driving force to change the face of venture and provides strong support to elevate women’s success in the tech world. Her diverse background and rich talent in the valley led to forming a unique entrepreneurial development methodology, Hitology. Its an immersive and residential program, designed to prepare an individual to scale their success and impact as a change agent and to build their entrepreneurial mindset and skills that can set them apart as a transformational leader in this fast paced world.

Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science at Stanford University, and Founding Director of Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment. Schiebinger is a leading international expert on gender in science and technology and has addressed the United Nations, the European Parliament, and the Korean National Assembly on that topic. Schiebinger received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize and Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the author of The Mind has no Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Harvard UP, 1989); Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Beacon Press, 1993); Has Feminism Changed Science? (Harvard UP, 1999); Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Harvard UP, 2004); The Secret Cures of Slaves: People, Plants, and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford UP, 2017). These books are available in Japanese translation. Among her edited volumes is Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Knowledge with Robert N. Proctor (Stanford UP, 2008). Her recent publications include: AI can be Sexist and Racist: It’s Time to Make it Fair, Nature (2018); Sex and Gender Analysis Improves Science and Engineering, Nature (2019); Gendered Innovations 2: How Inclusive Analysis Contributes to Research and Innovation European Commission (2020); A Framework for Sex, Gender, and Diversity Analysis in Research: Funding Agencies Have Ample Room to Improve Their Policies, Science (2022).

Seiji Yasubuchi assumed the role of Representative Director, President and CEO for both AXA Life Insurance Co., Ltd. and AXA Holdings Japan Co., Ltd. in 2019.
Prior to this, Seiji was President and Country Manager of Visa Worldwide Japan (2017-2019), President & CEO of GE Capital Japan since 2007. He joined GE in 2006 as SVP, GE Commercial Finance Asia.
He was Managing Director at UBS Investment Bank (2001-2006), and Executive Director at Ripplewood Japan (1999-2001). Seiji started his career at Mitsubishi Corporation in 1979.
He is also a member of the Operating Committee of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives, Member of Board of Trustees, Shizenkan University, Director, Mogi-Honke Foundation for Education & Culture, Director, Dialogue Japan Society, Member of Board of Councilors, KIBOW, and one of 100 Founders of UWC ISAK Japan.
Seiji holds a B.A. in Economics from Waseda University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Born in Hiroshima Prefecture in 1965, graduated from The University of Tokyo in 1990. MBA, Stanford University 1995. At the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (presently Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) in 1990, he engaged in work on automobiles, trade with the US, energy, ventures, etc., then was seconded to a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.Resigned from METI in 2000.
Then, founded ACCA Networks as Founder and Representative Director, engaging in the diffusion of low cost/ fixed cost broadband access aimed at individuals and corporate enterprises, contributing to the infrastructure of Japan’s internet industry.
The company became listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2005, and he resigned in 2008.
Won his first election in 2009, and is now in his fourth term as Governor of Hiroshima Prefecture, which is strongry propeling AI Sandbox project, Unicorn10 project, and human capital management.
The first governer in Japan to take paternity leave.

Maiko Todoroki is the President and CEO of Poppins Corporation. The company was founded 36 years ago by her mother, Noriko Nakamura, and their mission has always been to support working women by providing quality childcare and elderly care service. Poppins currently operates over 330 nursery schools across Japan and also provides in-home nanny and babysitter, elderly care service, and infertility prevention initiatives. Poppins’s IPO to the first section of Tokyo Stock Exchange (now TSE Prime Market) in Dec 2020 was presented as the first SDGs-IPO in Japan. She is a director of the All Japan Childcare Services Association. From 2021, serves as a coordinator at the Japan Association of Corporate Executives, and from 2023, serves as a  Vice-Chair of its Regulatory and Competition Policy Committee. She appointed as the director of Education Beyond. She is a mother of 14 years-old boy and 12 years-old girl.

Katrina Masumi Lake
Katrina Lake is the Founder and current Chairperson of Stitch Fix. Katrina founded Stitch Fix (NASDAQ: SFIX) in 2011 and served as Chief Executive Officer from its inception until August 2021. During Katrina’s tenure as CEO, the company grew from $0 to over $2B in revenue, leveraging less than $50M in venture capital. When she took the company public in 2017, she was the youngest female Founder CEO to do so, at 34 years old. The company was valued at over $6B when she transitioned to chairperson in 2021. Katrina serves on the board of Recruit Holdings, the Tokyo-based technology company, since 2021. Katrina is also on the board of Glossier, beloved skincare and makeup brand based in New York. Katrina previously served on the board and on the audit committee of GrubHub from 2015 to 2021 when the company was acquired by JustEat. Prior to founding Stitch Fix, Katrina managed the blogger platform at Polyvore, a digital community in the fashion space, which was acquired by Yahoo in 2015. Katrina holds a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Harvard University. 

Miki Tsusaka is the president of Microsoft Japan. Appointed in February 2023, she leads Microsoft’s engagement with customers, and business partners and is responsible for all product, solution, service and support offerings in Japan.
Under her leadership, she focuses on enabling the acceleration of Japan's digital transformation through Microsoft’s global and local expertise of our leading productivity and platform solutions. She will also build and reinforce Microsoft’s reputation in Japan as a trusted partner for individuals, organizations and governments.
Prior to joining Microsoft Japan, she was a Senior Partner and Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where she worked for clients in a wide range of industries in Japan and overseas, helping them develop and implement growth strategies, improve profitability, redesign organization and promote digital transformation. She established strategic consulting groups specializing in marketing, sales and pricing strategy development and led the expansion of BCG's service areas. As for BCG’s operation, she has been a member of the Executive Committee for two three-year terms and served as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) as well.
She is a member of Japan Association for Corporate Executives (KEIZAI DOYUKAI) and Japan Business Federation (KEIDANREN).
She holds a Bachelor of AB, Government and East Asian Studies from the Harvard University, and an MBA degree from the Harvard Business School. 

Bob is Kearney’s tenth managing partner. He joined the firm in 1995 and led Kearney’s global aerospace and defense, automotive, transportation, and infrastructure practices with a focus on organizational transformations for large commercial and government clients globally. He also served as chair for Kearney’s Middle East and Africa region for nine years.

In addition to sustaining growth in the MEA region, Bob led the firm’s strategic growth initiative and spearheaded the acquisition of top Middle East transformation specialist MSE to better support Kearney's clients in end-to-end transformation initiatives.

Bob’s career has spanned living and working in the US, Europe, and the Middle East. He holds an MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, a master's in aerospace engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, and a BA in physics from the University of Virginia.

Mr. Satoshi Hirose joined Globis University in 2016.  His previous capacity was Co-COO/ SVP of BellSystem24, the largest Call Center outsourcing company in Japan.  He also served as Executive Officer in charge of Corporate Planning, Operations and Technology at AIG/ AIU Insurance company.

Glen S. Fukushima is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C. think tank.  In October 2021, President Joseph R. Biden nominated him to be Vice Chairman of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, and the U.S. Senate confirmed him in April 2022.  After practicing law, he served as Director for Japanese Affairs (1985-88) and Deputy Assistant United States Trade Representative for Japan and China (1988-90) at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), Executive Office of the President. From 1990 to 2012, he was based in Tokyo as a senior business executive with one European and four American multinationals and was elected to two terms as President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the Asia Society’s Global Council. A third-generation Japanese American raised in California, he was educated at Deep Springs College, Stanford University, Harvard University, Keio University, and the University of Tokyo, where he was a Fulbright Fellow.

 Takako Hikotani is a Professor at Gakushuin University International Centre and Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Tokyo. She was Visiting Professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California at San Diego (Spring 2022 and Winter 2023), and Gerald L. Curtis Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy at Columbia University from 2016 to 2021. Before teaching in the United States, she taught at the National Defense Academy of Japan for 18 years. Her area of expertise is Japanese domestic politics, foreign policy, and comparative civil-military relations. She was a Visiting Professional Specialist at Princeton University (2010-2011) and a Fellow of the US-Japan Leadership Program, US-Japan Foundation (2000- ). She received her BA from Keio University, MAs from Keio University and Stanford University, and Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, where she was a President's Fellow.

Dr. Jagannath Panda is the Head of the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs (SCSA-IPA) at the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP), Sweden. He is also a Professor at the Department of Regional and Global Studies at the University of Warsaw; and a Senior Fellow at The Hague Center for Strategic Studies in the Netherlands. As a senior expert on China, East Asia, and Indo-Pacific affairs, Prof. Panda has testified to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission at the US Congress on ‘China and South Asia’. He is the Series Editor for Routledge Studies on Think Asia.

Joshua W. Walker, PhD became President & CEO of Japan Society in December 2019. Previously, he worked at Eurasia Group, the world’s leading political risk analysis firm, where he served as global head of strategic initiatives and Japan in the Office of the President. Prior to that, he was CEO and president of the USA Pavilion of the 2017 World Expo in Astana, Kazakhstan; founding dean of the APCO Institute; and senior vice president of global programs at APCO Worldwide, a leading global strategic communications firm based in Washington, D.C. Before joining the private sector, he worked in numerous roles at various U.S. government agencies, including the State Department and the Defense Department. He is Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, and professor of Leadership and the American presidency at George Mason University and the Reagan Foundation. He was also Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and co-founded the Yale Journal of International Affairs. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Richmond, a master’s degree from Yale University, and a doctorate from Princeton University. Dr. Walker grew up in Japan where his parents still serve as missionaries, came to the United States when he was 18, and is bicultural and bilingual.

Dr. Ken Jimbo is a Professor of International Relations at Keio University and a Managing Director of Programs at the International House of Japan (IHJ/I-House). He is concurrently an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS). He served as a Special Advisor to the Japan Ministry of Defense in 2020 and Senior Advisor to the National Security Secretariat from 2018 to 2020.

His main research interests lie in International Security, Japan-U.S. Security Relations, and Japan’s Foreign and Defense Policy. He has served as a policy advisor for various Japanese governmental commissions and research groups, including the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. His policy writings have been published by the RAND Corporation, NBR, the Stimson Center, the Pacific Forum CSIS, Japan Times, Nikkei, Yomiuri, Asahi, and Sankei Shimbun.

For more than 15 years, she has been in charge of brand design and communication for a major international manufacturer.
At Kontrapunkt, she develops brands and strategies for domestic and international clients by combining the unique insight and conceptualization skills + communication skills she has cultivated there. She specializes in developing skillful communication plans by incorporating client and consumer insights into concepts.

Miles Pennington is professor of Design Led Innovation at The University of Tokyo, where he is Director of the unique international and multidisciplinary DLX Design Lab. The lab collaborates with researchers at the university to create value through design. Previous to the University of Tokyo he was at the Royal College of Art in London and was Head of Programme of the Innovation Design Engineering (IDE) joint Masters programme with Imperial College - he is an alumnus of the IDE programme and graduated in 1992. He was also Founder and Head of the pioneering international exchange programme Global Innovation Design (GID). In the past, in parallel to his academic work he was a Director of the innovation consultancy Design Stream and more recently Director in the London office of the international design agency Takram. He moved to Japan in September 2017 to join The University of Tokyo.

Jay Pillai is an accomplished AI professional with extensive experience in generative AI and machine learning. Currently serving as the Director of AI at Figma, Jay Pillai enhances product offerings through AI integration. Previous roles include Engineering Leader in Generative AI at Amazon, where Jay Pillai developed a conversational shopping assistant, and a similar position at Apple, overseeing multiple teams in building machine learning models. Notable contributions were made at Google DeepMind and Google Research, focusing on transformative projects in retail and deep neural networks for Google products. Jay Pillai's academic background includes a Ph.D. in Machine Learning from the University of Maryland, complemented by multiple degrees in engineering and computer science from prestigious institutions. As an AI Coach, Jay Pillai also supports fresh graduates and industry professionals in career development and enhancing their technical skills.

Kinya is an award-winning design engineer experienced in various products, including hardware, software and interactive art. He holds a BEng from the University of Tokyo and an MA from the Royal College of Art in the UK. His work was selected as a permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was assigned as a visiting professor at the Royal College of Art from 2015 to 2018. With his contribution to the RCA, he was awarded an Honorary Fellow RCA, in 2018. Kinya is also appointed as a member of several design-related committees of the Japanese Government.

Helle Kristoffersen has been a member of TotalEnergies’ Executive Committee since 2019. She is today President Asia, based in Tokyo. She was President Strategy & Sustainability from 2021 to 2024 and President Strategy & Innovation from 2019 to 2021. Before that, she took part in creating TotalEnergies’ low carbon arm Gas Renewables & Power as SVP Strategy & Corporate affairs from 2016 to 2019. Before joining TotalEnergies in 2011, she held a number of management positions in the ITC sector at Alcatel from 1994 to 2010. She is a graduate of the French ENS Ulm and ENSAE and holds a master from Université Paris Sorbonne. She is an alumna of the French Institute for Higher National Defense Studies and a Knight of the French Legion of Honor.

Jean-Eric Paquet is the Ambassador of the European Union (EU) to Japan since autumn 2022.

He held various mandates at the European Commission, where he contributed in shaping EU policy in various fields. As the Director-General for Research and Innovation from 2018 and 2022, he set up the European Innovation Council and promoted a whole-of-government approach for R&I, notably via the creation of several EU Missions to solve major ecological, societal and economical challenges.

He gained considerable experience at international level as Director for the Western Balkans in the Directorate-General for European Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations and as EU Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania from 2004 to 2007.

From 2015 to 2018, he was Deputy Secretary-General of the European Commission, in charge of Better Regulation and Policy Coordination, covering all policy areas related to the EU Green Deal.

She received her PhD in March 2022 from the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Engineering. She works for several thinktanks and universities and served on government committees including the GX (Green Transformation) Implementation Council chaired by Prime Minister Kishida.
She founded U3 Innovations LLP in October 2018 and continues to pursue initiatives as President to connect a broad range of industries and companies to ensure that Japan has an abundant supply of sustainable energy by 2050.

Mr. Terazawa was Vice Minister for International Affairs at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) until July 2019. He led METI’s international policy operations, including the coordination to produce the joint statements for the G20 Osaka Summit. Mr. Terazawa also supported PM Shinzo ABE in numerous meetings with other leaders.
He previously served as Director-General of the Commerce and Information Policy Bureau, where he oversaw METI policy related to the information industry, including information technology (IT) and cyber security.
Prior to this, He served as Director-General of the Trade and Economic Cooperation Bureau, where he spearheaded initiatives to promote high-quality infrastructure exports, foreign direct investment, and recruitment of highly-skilled foreign professionals. Previously, he also served as the executive secretary to the Prime Minister from September 2011 to December 2012.
In his career, he played a key role in the design of a number of growth strategies including the first growth strategy under the DPJ Government as well as the first growth strategy under the second Abe Administration.
Other career highlights include developing policy packages following the global financial crisis and the Great East Japan Earthquake. He also introduced the first stock option in Japan as well as the tax incentives for angel investment for startups.

Tony Elison is the Managing Director at Spotify Japan since February of 2021. His career spans over 30 years in digital media, entertainment, and music, in a variety of strategy, business development, and general management roles based in New York, Seattle, and Tokyo.  Before Spotify, he built his career journey at several world-famous companies such as MTV, Nintendo, YouTube, and The Walt Disney Company.  Today, Spotify is driving growth in Japan's evolving audio streaming market and leads the world with 626M monthly listeners and 246M paying subscribers (as of June 2024).

Harry Tanaka has over twenty-five years of experience in entertainment and media as business management and legal in Japan, Korea and the United States.

He currently runs Aerial Group, a group of companies that focus on cross-border projects in entertainment. “Studio Muso” develops and produces a slate of movie/series projects based on Japanese/Asian IPs and also provides Hollywood quality production service in Japan. Advisory firms provide business/legal strategic and practical supports, while “appare” plans and executes overseas expansion of talent and IPs from Japan with special focus on stage plays and location-based entertainment.

He was General Manager of Studio Motion Pictures and Media Distribution for the Walt Disney Company Japan as the top local corporate executive for seventeen years and subsequently sat on the board of Studio Ghibli. He began his career at Disney as legal counsel joining from Nishimura & Asahi. Admitted to practice in Japan and New York State.

Sakiko Yamada has rewarded a decoration by His Majesty the King Felipe VI of the Kingdom of Spain: Commander of the Order of Isabel La Católica.

International Academy of Gastronomy Japan-President
FOOD LOSS BANK, Inc. -CEO President
Splendent Media,LLC-President
Sports Doctors Network -COO/Head of Asia-Pacific
The Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants – Official Ambassador
-Cabinet Office’s Cool Japan producer and many other government engagements -SDGs Advisor for Saga Prefecture
-Committee member of Tokyo Metropolitan Government-Committee member of Gifu Prefecture treasure judge : appointed by Gifu Governor -Guest

Senior Strategic Advisor for City “CHANGE” (SDG5) of the City of Los Angeles

Awards/Distinctions
-“Sustainable Award by JAPAN TIMES
-“Woman of Influence” Award by LVMH Veuve Clicquot
-“Game Change Maker” by Esquire Magazine
-Commandarie de Bordeaux
-Distinction Ambassador of the Principality of Monaco
Featured at Masterclass by UN-WFF

Her film “Wilde Salomé,” starring and directed by Al Pacino has won the “Jaeger LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award” at the Venice International Film Festival.
Producer of “Attack on Titan” with Heyday Films, contracted with Warner Bros Entertainment and currently in production.

As a senior partner with KEARNEY, a global management consultancy, Umezawa has served leading corporations in Japan and the US for more than 25 years. Areas of his expertise include strategy, innovation, urban development, and organization.

At Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), he has led the efforts to launch and develop CIC Tokyo, Japan's largest innovation center. CIC is the world’s leading operator of shared office/lab facilities for startups, operating innovation centers in 8 cities worldwide. CIC Tokyo, opened in Oct. 2020, is a host for 280 companies and several innovation clusters, including healthcare, environment and energy, and smart city.

As an outside director, Umezawa serves the board of forStartups, Inc., the market leading talent agency for Japanese startups. Umezawa also sits on government committees on innovation and intellectual property strategy, tourism, and creative industry development. He holds a bachelor of law from the University of Tokyo and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Kirby Daley consults for a family office/foundation with a particular focus on Asia. After first moving to Japan in the 1990s, his prior experience includes 10 years at the Societe Generale Group (Fimat/Newedge), where he was Senior Strategist and worked in both Tokyo and Hong Kong. Subsequent to this, Mr. Daley also served as Co-CIO/Global Strategist for a family office/foundation, overseeing macro strategy, hedge fund allocations and portfolio hedging. In these and other roles throughout his career, Japan has remained a central focus of Mr. Daley's work, whether based in Asia, New York or the Cayman Islands. Mr. Daley holds a B.A. in Political Science (Economics Emphasis) from the University of Minnesota.

Noah Sneider is The Economist’s Tokyo Bureau Chief, overseeing the newspaper's coverage of Japanese politics, business, society and culture. Prior to this he covered Russia and the former Soviet Union as Moscow Correspondent, including events ranging from the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine to climate change in the Russian Arctic. Before joining The Economist, he reported for a range of publications, including The New York Times and The New Republic. His writing has also appeared in Harper’s, The Atlantic, and Slate, among others. He was the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship in 2019. He is a member of the third generation in his family to live and work in Japan.

Ms. Tashiro began her career with the Daiwa Securities Group in 1986, following her graduation from Waseda University with a BA in Political Science. She received an MBA from Stanford University in 1991. She has held various positions at Daiwa, including overseas assignments in Singapore, London, and New York. In Japan, in addition to her role as Head of Investor Relations (1999–2005), she spent six years in the retail division of the Group. After returning from the US, she was appointed of Head of Overseas Operations in 2016 and Deputy President in 2019. From 2020 to 2024, she led various sectors as Deputy President, including Overseas Operations, SDGs, Sustainability, and Think Tank initiatives. Currently, she continues to serve as Deputy President, overseeing Sustainability, Financial Literacy and Education, Securities Asset Management, and Think Tank functions.
She also serves amongst other roles as Vice Chairman at the Japan Association of Corporate Executive and Trustee of the IFRS foundation.

Jesper Koll has been researching and investing in Japan since becoming a resident in 1986. Over the past two decades, Jesper has been consistently recognized as one of the top Japan strategists/economists, having worked as Chief Strategist and Head of Research for U.S. investment banks J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch. He currently serves as Expert Director for the Monex Group and the Japan Catalyst Fund (Japan’s 1st retail investor based corporate engagement/activist fund). His analysis and insights have earned him a position on several Japanese government and corporate advisory committees, including Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike’s Advisory Board. In 2022, he was appointed Global Ambassador for Tokyo’s Financial Center initiative. Jesper serves as Board Director of OIST, the Okinawa Institute for Science and Technology and is a Founder and Board Director of the Asia Society Japan and heads their Policy Committee. He is one of the few non-Japanese members of the Keizai Doyukai, the Japan Association of Corporate Executives; and serves on the board of several Japan-based start-ups. He has written three books in Japanese and, in 2021, created the acclaimed video/pod-cast series “Japan - Capitalism that works”.
Jesper is an economist, angel-investor, patron; and yes, a Japan Optimist.

Shixiang Shane Gu is a Research Scientist and Manager at Google DeepMind, leading the Multilinguality Post-Training team for Gemini. He previously worked on ChatGPT at OpenAI and as a Research Scientist at Google Brain. Shane has made significant contributions to generative modeling, reinforcement learning, robotics, and language modeling. He holds a PhD in Machine Learning from Cambridge, supervised by Richard E. Turner, Zoubin Ghahramani, and Bernhard Schoelkopf, and a B.ASc. from the University of Toronto, advised by Geoffrey Hinton. Shane has also held visiting positions at Stanford and the University of Tokyo. Beyond his research, he angel invests and advises several AI startups across the US and Japan, including Pika Labs and MultiOn. Born in Japan to Chinese parents, Shane is a Canadian citizen fluent in three languages.

Cory Ondrejka is the CTO for SmartNews, where he is responsible for delivering quality news to millions of people in Japan and the United States. He was previously VP of Product Management and Technical Advisor to the CEO  at Google, where he led the Core Experience team, responsible for improving the product experience across all of Google’s products. His teams delivered an entirely new user experience for Google products in Material You, multiple cutting edge Generative AI experiences, and transformed foundational technology depended on by billions of people. Prior to Google, Cory led the mobile transition at Meta as VP Mobile, was the co-creator and founding-CTO of Second Life, and shipped multiple video games. Cory Ondrejka is a Senior Fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University and a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and former Naval Officer.

Dr. Richard Dasher has been Director of the US-Asia Technology Management Center and Adjunct Faculty at Stanford University since 1994.  His research focuses on the impact of new technologies on industry value chains, open innovation management, and regional innovation ecosystems in different countries.  He concurrently served as Executive Director of Stanford’s Center for Integrated Systems (1998 - 2015) and as an outside Board Director and member of the Management Council of Tohoku University (2004 - 2010).   Dr Dasher is also a Founding Partner of Global Hands-On Venture Capital (GHOVC), and he advises business accelerators, startup companies, and think-tanks in the U.S., Canada, and several Asian countries. He is on the evaluation and review committees of several major science and technology funding programs, such as the WPI Program of MEXT/JSPS.  He received the Japanese Foreign Minister’s Commendation in 2023 for long-term promotion of economic relations between Japan and the U.S.A.

Yoshiharu Hoshino was born in 1960, in Karuizawa, Nagano, the fourth generation in a
family ryokan (Japanese Inn) business. After graduating from Cornell University with a
master’s degree on hotel management, he became the CEO of Hoshino Resorts in 1991.
Under his leadership, the company has grown to operating 72 properties in and outside of
Japan with a total of five brands, HOSHINOYA, KAI (a brand of upscale boutique hot
spring ryokan), RISONARE (a premier active family resort brand), OMO (a warm and
casual hotel for city-tourism) and BEB (a carefree hotel brand for millennials). In 2013,
Yoshiharu Hoshino established Hoshino Resorts REIT, listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange,
the first REIT in Japan to specialise in the tourism industry.

Terrie Lloyd is a 66-year dual-national of Australia and New Zealand, who has lived in Japan for 41 years. He formed his first company on a working holiday visa at the age of 25, in Japan, and has established 18 companies in Japan since then. He has had 8 successful earn-outs, including DaiJob.com, Japan’s first mid-career recruiting portal, which had 160,000 registered users interacting in both English and Japanese within 24 months of starting.
Lloyd is CEO of Japan Travel KK– Japan’s largest (by content volume) and second largest (by traffic) inbound travel site. Lloyd invented a unique “structured” crowdsourcing software platform to create massive amounts of user generated content at low cost. The www.japantravel.com website features over 50,000 full-length articles in 13 languages and receives over 1MM unique users per month. The company also operates a travel agency specializing in High Net Worth customers, and a software business.  
Lloyd is married to a Japanese national, Kumiko, and has 4 daughters and 1 son, ranging from 38 years to 21. His hobbies are starting businesses, cycling and swimming, and hanging out with the kids (and now, grandkids).

Stephen is an award winning senior executive with a track record in leading large scale digital transformation and running businesses across banking and insurance. He has lived in Japan, India, China, and Singapore running global and regional Technology and Operations teams.
He has held various senior leadership roles in technology for world leading financial institutions and is an experienced independent board director for NGOs, corporates and industry bodies.
Also, he has a passion for innovation and has run and sat on panels covering topics such as Digital Health, and AI in financial services, he is an early stage investor and VC advisor.

Tatsuo started in HR for P&G Japan Ltd in 1996. In 2001, he joined GE Japan Inc. as HR Director of GE Capital Japan and Region Org & Talent Development Director of GE Capital Asia Pacific. HR Director in GE Japan Inc. from 2012, he moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2015 to be Region Head of HR for the Oil & Gas business and Organization & Talent Development Head for GE Asia Pacific. In 2018, he joined Mercari, Inc. as Executive Officer and CHRO. He joined Panasonic Holdings Corporation as Executive Officer and Group CHRO in July 2024.

Miho Tanimoto is the Global Chief HR Officer at Dentsu Group from 2023. She leads the global HR function, driving strategies that align HR with the company’s business objectives. Her focus is on transforming Dentsu Group into a people-centered organization.
Before joining Dentsu Group, Miho served as Executive HR Leader for Google Japan from 2018, where she led efforts to build a diverse and innovative workforce. Prior to Google, she spent 18 years at GE, where her final role was the Executive Officer HR for GE in Japan. With over 25 years of HR experience across multiple industries, Miho has worked both in Japan and in the US including managing GE’s renowned global HR leadership program. Throughout her career, she has been passionate about leadership, organizational, and talent development. She is also an active member of the Japan’s HR community dedicated to developing the next generation of global HR talent.

Wakana leads LinkedIn’s Japan business which includes Talent solutions, Learning and Marketing solutions of the world’s largest online professional network since March 2023. Prior to LinkedIn, she managed Google's Ad sales for strategic accounts, creating innovative digital strategy & solutions for Japanese partners. She started her career in management consulting, and later managed the Lancome brand as a Marketing Manager in L'Oreal. Following the 3.11 Earthquake, she joined the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Investigation Commission to lead the International Affairs. After she ran Change Management at GlaxoSmithkline Japan, she joined Google in 2014. She has a Bachelor of Science from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and an MBA from Harvard Business School (Class of 2003). She is also a certified Coach, President of Harvard Business School Club of Japan, as well as Senior Advisor for Georgetown University Alumni Club of Japan. She grew up in Tokyo, Kobe, Jakarta, studied and worked in the US, Japan, and France. She is a passionate traveler, dancer and mom of 2 children.

Alice Albrecht recently joined SmartNews to work on AI-enabled products and was previously the founder of re:collect AI, a company aimed at augmenting human intelligence by using AI to connect all of the information people consume and allowing them to access it in a more natural way when doing thought work. Alice has been using machine learning to build better products in tech for over a decade and prior to that was an academic, focusing on Cognitive Neuroscience.

As part of the Asia-Pacific leadership team at Edelman, Antoine leads the Corporate Affairs & Trust Services practice and brings 25 years of international communications experience with multinational corporations, governmental organizations and global brands. Antoine has experience managing reputational issues in various markets, including Japan where he has advised global Japanese corporations and C-suite executives. Before Edelman, Antoine held senior leadership roles at strategic communications consultancies in Asia. Antoine holds an Executive MBA from Kellogg School of Management and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and a Masters Degree from the University of Wolverhampton in the UK and the Institute of Political Sciences in France. Antoine is fluent in French and English with knowledge of Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.

Lisa Kaplan founded Alethea in 2019 to help customers navigate the new digital reality and protect against online risks stemming from disinformation, misinformation, and social media manipulation. Under Kaplan’s leadership, the Alethea team has built the scalable solutions that enable the detection and mitigation of online risk targeting organizations, institutions, and brands.
Kaplan has briefed US, NATO, EU, and G-7 policymakers and officials on disinformation. She is frequently sought out by top-tier media outlets, such as The New York Times, WSJ, Bloomberg, CNN, and the Washington Post for her commentary and analysis on industry issues. She was named to Inc’s 2024 Female Founders List for innovative entrepreneurs; PRWeak’s 2023 40 Under 40 list for rising stars in strategic and crisis communications; and the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 list of top entrepreneurs and leaders. Kaplan is a graduate of Colby College.

Takashi Nakazaki is a Special Counsel at Anderson Mori & Tomotsune, with extensive expertise in data protection and privacy, cybersecurity, intellectual property, and emerging fields such as AI and the Metaverse. Admitted to the bar in 2001, he holds an LL.B. from Tokyo University and an LL.M. from Columbia Law School, earned in 2008. He expanded his international experience at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. in 2009.

Mr. Nakazaki is a recognized authority, serving on several expert committees for the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the Cabinet Office, and other government agencies, where he advises on data protection and cyber law. He was instrumental in drafting the ""AI Guidelines for Business"" and actively contributes to the national medical large-scale machine learning model (LMM) project ""SiP3."" Additionally, he has been commissioned to lead various surveys for the Personal Information Protection Commission.

Beyond his legal practice, Mr. Nakazaki co-founded the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) Tokyo and lectures on AI at Keio Law School, reflecting his dedication to both professional development and academic advancement in the field.

Ross Rowbury is Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of Group Corporate Communications at Nomura Holdings. He has observed Japan while living and working here for four decades. Commencing his career in finance in Tokyo in the early 1980s, he later moved into public relations and communications, holding senior positions at Gavin Anderson & Co. (now Kreab) and PRAP Japan. He headed the Edelman business in Japan for 10 years until July 2020. Prior to joining Nomura in October he was a freelance consultant to a number of firms on their Japan business strategy. He is also visiting professor of Asian marketing at Doshisha University in Kyoto and is on the Board of TELL a suicide prevention and mental health NPO.

Peter Gruss was President of the prestigious Max Planck Society from 2002 until 2014 and President and CEO of OIST from 2017 until the end of 2022. He earned his PhD in biology at the University of Heidelberg and is honorary professor at the University of Göttingen. Professor Gruss has been Chair of the Siemens Technology and Innovation Council. He was a member of the Supervisory Boards of Siemens, Munich RE, Actelion Pharmaceuticals as well as of the Advisory Board of Deloitte and Allianz. While President of the Max Planck Society, he was appointed as a member of the “Innovation Dialogue” of the Federal Chancellery chaired by Angela Merkel. His honours include the Leibniz Prize, the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine, the German Prize for Technology and Innovation by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, as well as the German Federal Cross of Merit. Recently, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star.

Dr. Kei Katsuno is Director of the Translational Research Division at Chugai Pharmaceutical. Prior to his current role, he led investment strategy and business development at the Global Health Innovative Technology (GHIT) Fund, a public-private partnership focused on advancing global health R&D, since its inception. He also served as Health Specialist at the World Bank after completing a fellowship at the East-West Center's Asia Pacific Leadership Program. Dr. Katsuno received his medical degree from the University of Tokyo and worked as a physician at the National Center for Global Health and Medicine. He possesses both Japanese and US medical licenses (ECFMG) and completed a Master of Public Health (MPH) program at Johns Hopkins University as a Fulbright Scholar. He is also a fellow of the US-Japan Leadership Program (USJLP) and a lecturer at the University of Tokyo and Osaka Metropolitan University, respectively.

Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture and raised in the US and Japan, Anna Nakayasu started her career as a physician and pivoted into venture capital after pursuing her MBA. She led healthcare investments at Sozo Ventures in Silicon Valley and worked as Lead Partner on Portfolia's Active Aging and Longevity Fund before joining GLOBIS Capital Partners in June 2023. Currently, she also leads the nonprofit Japan Healthcare Innovation Hub, creating an ecosystem to accelerate innovation in the industry. She holds an MD from the University of Tokyo and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

As a distinguished emergency medicine specialist, Sho completed both his residency and fellowship, earning board certifications from the prestigious Japanese Association for Acute Medicine. His diverse professional experience includes serving as a helicopter flight doctor on Ishigaki Island, Japan, for a year and further extending his service as a ship's doctor on the Ogasawara Islands for three months.

Embracing a career transition, Sho ventured into the realm of medical technology. Serving as the executive officer and chief medical director at MEDLEY, Inc., a forward-thinking med-tech startup, sho dedicated two years to advancing medical practice through the integration of AI technology.

In November 2017, Sho embarked on a new journey as the founder of Aillis, Inc., a trailblazing startup specializing in AI medical devices. Aillis has proudly conducted Japan's first clinical trial for AI medical devices, leading to the launch of ""nodoca,"" a groundbreaking AI medical device proficient in diagnosing various diseases from pharyngeal images. As of 2023, nodoca has the singular distinction of being the only AI medical device in Japan to be covered by national health insurance.
TEDx talk on Sho's career:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2N7JoMU3U4
Feb. 2024 in Bulgaria

After successfully raising $70 million in funding, his team at Aillis, Inc. is currently strategizing to broaden our product's reach beyond Japan. Aillis is passionately committed to leveraging the power of AI to revolutionize healthcare worldwide. A testament to their innovative strides, Aillis has been selected among the top 90+ Artificial Intelligence Startups in Healthcare by CB Insights, and has become the honored winners of the 2023 Startup World Cup, a prestigious event held across 50 countries and regions worldwide, with 30,000 startups entering.

Fathiya Al Rashdi has been working as a VP for Program Affairs at the Royal Academy of Management. She is overseeing all leadership programs and other program at RAM. Before that, she was the Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Studies at the College of Arts and Social Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University.

Hakima Bathaoui, born in Rabat, Morocco, and now holding Japanese nationality, has a diverse background in international relations and diplomacy. While completing her MBA at Globis University, she was appointed Vice President and Head of the Middle East Market at Tokyu Hotels and Resorts Headquarters, where she leads market expansion and strategy.

Her diplomatic experience includes roles as Head of the Ambassador’s Office at the UAE Embassy in Japan and Head of Public Relations at the Saudi Arabia Embassy, as well as an advisory position to the Moroccan ambassador.

Hakima also served as a News and Program Announcer for the Arabic and French sections at NHK World, Japan’s national broadcaster. Fluent in several languages, she has contributed to academia by compiling business dictionaries and writing on Arab-Japanese economic relations, reinforcing her commitment to cultural exchange and global collaboration.

After receiving an M.A. (Oriental History) from Keio University, Mr. HOSAKA Shuji became Special Assistant of the Japanese Embassies in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Since then, he has held various posts in the field of the Middle East studies, including Professor of Kindai University, Osaka, Director of JSPS Cairo Research Station, Director of JIME Center / Board Member of the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan (IEEJ) and Adjunct Professor of Waseda University. He became President of Japan Association for Middle East Studies (JAMES) in April 2021. Among his publications are Jihadism (2017), Cyber-Islam (2014), Osama Bin Laden: His Life and Jihad (2011), and Saudi Arabia: Oil Kingdom in Transition (2006).

She is an economic development specialist focusing on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Trade Promotion. Having worked in multiple countries, she is currently based in NEOM, Saudi Arabia. She embarked on her career by spearheading FDI and trade promotion efforts in the UK and Japan, transitioning to advisory roles where she provides governmental agencies in developing countries with insights and guidance on legal and operational frameworks to enhance their business attraction policies and practices.
Her professional portfolio spans across various regions globally, including Pakistan, India, the Philippines, Algeria, and Senegal. Additionally, she has garnered experience in financial institutions such as Citibank and MetLife, which has broadened her understanding of how the private sector navigates decision-making processes and how external factors can influence these decisions.

"Toru Takahashi is the President & CEO of GLOBIS Europe BV, based in Brussels, Belgium. Under his leadership, GLOBIS offers Pre-MBA courses and global leadership training for corporate clients across the EMEA region. He also imparts his wisdom on Global Perspectives and Entrepreneurial Leadership in GLOBIS University's MBA program. Renowned for his corporate training expertise, Takahashi conducts seminars on developing corporate strategy during overseas expansion and leadership for localizing overseas sites.

Before joining GLOBIS, he spent eight years on overseas assignments with Marubeni Corporation, spearheading infrastructure projects in Iran and managing diverse business ventures from their EMEA regional headquarters in Belgium. Takahashi is the author of "People who get results overseas don't use cultural issues as an excuse" and co-author of "GLOBIS MBA Management Book II."

A Sophia University economics graduate, he also completed the Stanford Executive Program (SEP) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is currently a PhD candidate at the Bucharest University for Economic Studies."