WISE Associate

WISE Associate Akiyo Higaki is currently a project manager to manage and plan events related to climate change in terms of the general insurance for advocating risk management. She worked for an organization that provided workshops about the SDGs and global citizenship to students and mainly coordinated the programs for university students in Japan and…

WISE Associate

WISE Associate After graduating from Keele University (UK) in 2016, with a BA in Criminology with Japanese, Caitlin joined the JET Programme. She worked as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) and Vice Prefectural Advisor in Kumamoto City, Japan. Through a strong interest in community involvement and service to others, she has held roles such as…

Director for Outreach

Samjhana has been working in the field of social entrepreneurship, social innovation, and social enterprise development for over 15 years. Currently, she is working as a senior advisor for Ashoka’s Global Venture Program, and advising women led social enterprises in Asia including Japan. At Ashoka, Samjhana previously led the venture program managing search and selection…

Council Member

Sarah is passionate about creating bridges between cultures and individuals. Prior to her graduate work in international relations and Japanese, she spent more than a decade teaching and volunteering overseas, including eight years teaching English and American studies at a small women’s college in Japan and two+ years with NGOs in Bangladesh, Russia, Mongolia, and…

Council Member

Yuka Hayashi covers financial regulation at the Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau. Until 2015, she was a correspondent and deputy bureau chief at the paper’s Tokyo office, writing about economy, foreign policy, and culture.  Before joining the paper in 2004, she was a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires, a sister publication, based in New York…

JSIE Advisory Board Member

Dr. Kurokawa received a MD degree in 1962 from the University of Tokyo, Faculty of Medicine. Following clinical training in internal medicine and then in nephrology at the Department of Medicine of the University of Tokyo Faculty of Medicine (1962-1969), he was research associate, Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (1969-1971), senior…

Council member

Akiko Murai is a leadership and career coach with Organizational Development and Global Talent Management background.  She has extensive and diverse professional experience ranging from the field work in Brazil with a United Nations agency to marketing financial products and services to high net worth individuals at a commercial bank.  Akiko also has worked for…

Council member

JSIE Council Tomoko Suzuki is Senior Portfolio Officer in the Economics and Industry Research unit at International Finance Corporation (IFC), providing combined analytics on global economics, markets, sector, geopolitical and development trends for IFC investment departments and their clients to inform investment and portfolio decisions. Prior to joining the Research unit, she was working at…

Council member

JSIE Council CEO   SDG Impact Japan Mari Kogiso is the CEO of SDG Impact Japan, which she founded in 2021 to promote social finance in Japan. Prior to SDG Impact Japan, she was the director of diversity and inclusion at the Fast Retailing. In this role, she also managed human rights committee and served as an advisor…

Director for External Relations

Director for External Relations, JSIE Mayumi is a director for external relations at Japan Institute for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship (JSIE.)  She joined JSIE as one of the starting members in 2015. Previously, she worked as a program officer at the Tokyo Foundation, a policy think tank, where she was involved in program planning, management,…

Council member

Director for Research

JSIE Director for Research Dr. Fumiko Sasaki is a faculty member of graduate schools of Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University, teaching East Asian Security. She is assigned to teach ‘Innovative Solutions to Human Security’ at the Earth Institute Executive Program at Columbia University. Previously she worked as a Community E-Learning Director of Distance Education…

Council member

Ms. Fumuro is a strategic communications management professional with over 20 years of experience, having engaged in public relations, public affairs and advertising in Washington D.C. and Tokyo. She is currently Director of Global Communications at SATO Global Solutions, a newly established American subsidiary of SATO Holdings, a Japanese leader in automatic ID solutions. Prior…

Founder & President

Founder & President of JSIE Hiromi Murakami is the Founder and President of JSIE. Prior to founding JSIE, she’s involved in various policy projects in US/Japanese institutions, including Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Global Health Policy Center, the Health and Global Policy Institute (HGPI), and Economic Strategy Institute. Currently is also a Visiting…

JSIE Advisory Board Member

Dr. Sachiko Kuno currently serves as the President and CEO of S&R Foundation in Washington, D.C., a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization she co-founded in 2000 to support talented individuals with high aspirations and great potential in the arts, sciences and social entrepreneurship, especially those who are furthering international cultural collaboration. Dr. Kuno studied biochemistry and biochemical…