Our Team

Mark Kato Co-President
Mr. Kato is a Sales, Marketing, & Business Development professional with more than 35 years of experience in high tech industries. Now he is CEO at Silicon Valley-Japan Business Consulting (www.svjbc.com ) and is helping Japanese and American clients to initiate/expand their businesses between the US and Japan. He has worked for Hewlett Packard, Agilent Technologies as a Director for Japanese Business and for Advanced Micro Devices as a Senior Director of Global Accounts. Using his extensive knowledge of American and Japanese businesses, he has built successful, mutually beneficial executive level relationships between large Japanese corporations and HQs of large American companies.

Chimmy Shioya Co-President & Board Member
Ms. Shioya is Director of Business Development at ZL Technologies, Inc. www.zlti.com, an email/file archiving & compliance software company based in San Jose, CA. She has over 20 years of experience in channel sales and marketing for high tech companies. Prior to ZL, she held sales and marketing management positions at companies ranging from start-ups to multinationals such as Reuters and Alcatel where she was responsible for developing the Japanese & Asia Pacific channels.

In 2006, Ms. Shioya was appointed Associate Professor of Tohoku University US Office. She spearheaded its efforts for the University’s brand marketing and business-academia collaboration strategy during her 3 year tenure.She earned her MBA, magna cum laude from City University of New York and an undergraduate degree from Chuo University in Japan. She moved to North America to pursue her post undergraduate study. Since then, she has lived and worked primarily in New York and Silicon Valley.

Nobuo Arai Program Committee

Akemi Koda Program Committee
Ms. Koda is an experienced marketing and business development professional with 15 years of experience in IT, managed services and corporate travel consulting. Her areas of focus include advertising and promotion, awareness and demand generation, and market research. Fluent in English and Japanese, Akemi understands market trends and consumer preferences on both sides of the Pacific. She has held positions with NEC Corporation of America, United Airlines, BTI, Carlson Inc., and Varig Airlines – Tokyo. Akemi holds degrees in Marketing and Consumer Arts & Sciences. She is a principal at USAsiaVenturePartners.com, a trusted source of marketing outsourcing, business development consulting, fundraising for venture growth and US penetration for Japanese firms.

Greg Tsutaoka Program Committee
Mr. Tsutaoka has 20+ years experience leading numerous corporate and program leapfrogging initiatives and their execution for Internet, software, and technology-service provider companies.

Joe Quinlan Program Committee
Mr. Quinlan is an experienced business development professional with a deep knowledge of sales and marketing practices in the US, Japan and Asia. Joe is fluent in both spoken and written Japanese, giving him a strong ability to interface in both American and Japanese business cultures. Joe worked in Tokyo at an IT subsidiary of the trading company Itochu, and then later held various marketing positions at Silicon Graphics (SGI).

Dean Yonenaga Alliance Management
Mr. Yonenaga has worked with Silicon Valley start-up companies to help them sell their products into the Japanese and Asia Pacific markets. He is a sales/marketing/business development professional with 25+ years experience in the high tech industry. He has worked with US companies to establish joint venture partnerships in Japan, develop OEM relationships with Japanese equipment suppliers, and sell directly to the Japanese customers. He has worked with Invarium, Sensys, OnWafer, and Prometrix; and is currently working at Cadence Design Systems.

Koichi Sato Japanese Alliance
Mr. Sato is a lead scientist in Sealed Air Corp and Create
Technologies,Inc., where he researches computer vision for factory
machines and surveillance systems. He is also a CEO of an environment
venture company, Fuzing, Inc., which proposes new technologies for
maximizing the utilization of wind energies. www.fuzinginc.co

Brandon Hill Corporate Relations Management
Mr. Hill is a CEO of a creative agency; btrax, Inc. specializes in design, development, marketing, branding, and Asian market localization. btrax is an award-winning design firm, noted for its excellence in the creation of superior solutions. We continually exceed expectations by delivering distinctive, interactive representations of our clients’ businesses.

Steve Naegele Newsletter, Media Management
Mr. Naegele came to Silicon Valley in 1980 and founded Steve Naegele Design, a graphic design company designing and producing effective B2B marketing and corporate communication materials which effectively implement marketing strategies to achieve marketing visions. He has been involved with Keizai Society since its beginning as the US Japan Kaisha Society. For more information visit www.naegeledesign.com.

Akiko Foo Content Management
Ms. Foo is an Operations and Project Management professional working for hi-tech companies with more than 15 years of experience. Her career is abundant with knowledge on how to bridge business relationships between Silicon Valley and Japan. Prior to joining ACCESS Systems, she worked at several start-ups and was in charge of operations and account management. She provided consulting and strategic business alliance services to clients and partnered several US venture companies with Japanese companies. Prior to entering the consulting field, Ms. Foo worked for Read-Rite Corporation and coordinated the joint venture project with Sumitomo Metal. She began her career at Advantest Corporation and worked in Tokyo and Santa Clara.

Tetsuya (Tex) Yamashita eMail Marketing
Mr. Yamashita started as heavy duty programmer at Teradata. Founded Nihongo Yellow Pages Inc. and provided targeted email services. Currently he works at Yahoo as an engineering program manager.

Sayuri Watanabe Treasurer and Logistics
Ms.Watanabe is an operation professional with more than 15 years of experience in hi-tech and manufacturing fields. She has worked for many multinational companies including
Panasonic and Hitachi AIC. She currently works for Hitachi Cable America. She is a Japanese national born in Tokyo and holds an Accounting degree from SJSU.

Junko Takiguchi Office/Event Management
Ms. Takiguchi has extensive experiences in operation, project management and sales fields in multinational companies including Ford Motor Company, Mazda Motor Corporation and Hitachi Cable America. With her experience and profession, she demonstrates ability to interface in both American and Japanese corporate cultures.

Nadine Grant President Emeritus
Mrs. Grant has been president of the Keizai Society since 1995. She is also a principal of Managing American Performance (MAP) an international management consulting company, helping especially start-up companies as an interim COO and executive coach, dealing especially with hiring, development and retention. A graduate of UC Berkeley, she come from a software systems engineering background that includes
technical management in R&D, Engineering, Manufacturing and Marketing /Sales.

Richard Dasher
Dr. Dasher has been Director of the US-Asia Technology Management Center since 1994 and Executive Director of the Center for Integrated Systems since 1998. Both organizations are in the Stanford University School of Engineering. He also holds Consulting Professor appointments at Stanford in Electrical Engineering (technology management) and in Asian Languages (Japanese business).

From 2004, Dr. Dasher became the first non-Japanese person ever asked to join the senior governance of a Japanese national university, serving a term on the Board of Directors of Tohoku University. He continues on the Management Council of Tohoku University and as Special Advisor to the Tohoku University president. He is on the Program Review Committee for the Japanese Ministry of Education’s World Premier International Research Center initiative. From 2001-2003, he was a member of the International Advisory Committee to the Japanese Minister of State for Science and Technology Policy in regard to the creation of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

Also active in business and management consulting, Dr. Dasher is an outside board director of ZyCube Inc. in Tokyo, Japan, and he is an advisor to several start-up companies in the U.S. and China. Dr. Dasher has been an advisor to the JETRO-sponsored US-Japan Business Incubation Center in San Jose, California, since 2000.

From 1990 – 93, Dr. Dasher was a board director of two Japanese companies in Tokyo, at which he developed new business in international licensing of media rights packages and other intellectual properties. From 1986 – 90, he was Director of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute advanced training centers in Japan and Korea, which provide full-time curricula to U.S. and select Commonwealth country diplomats assigned to those countries.

He received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Linguistics from Stanford University and is co-author of the book Regularity in Semantic Change (Cambridge University Press, 2002). Having received the Bachelor of Music degree in clarinet and orchestra conducting in 1977 from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he served on the faculty of his alma mater from 1978-85 while a graduate student at Stanford. He maintains an active interest in performing and listening to music.

Koji Osawa Global Catalyst Partners
Koji Osawa, Ph.D. is managing principal, Asia, and co-founder at Global Catalyst Partners. He has extensive experience in investment and management of high-tech companies in Asia and the United States. Dr. Osawa was at Mitsubishi Corporation for 14 years, starting in 1985, and served as division manager, Mitsubishi International Corporation (Palo Alto office), 1993 through 1999. He was responsible for business development with Silicon Valley companies in the areas of semiconductors, communications, and software. During this period, he invested in several private companies and venture capital funds. He arranged a wide range of business agreements between these private companies and prominent Japanese and Asian companies, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of business. Dr. Osawa also served as general manager of MC Silicon Valley, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corp., and has been responsible for managing a U.S. investment fund since 1998.

Dr. Osawa serves on the boards of Siimpel, Aquest, Verient, and Reperio, and is the board observer for Miradia and Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC). He works closely with Beceem Communications, Newport Media, Melodis, and Ikoa.

Dr. Osawa serves on the boards of several nonprofit organizations: Global Catalyst Foundation, Japan Technology Professionals Association, Keizai Society, Relief International-Schools Online (www.ri.org and www.schoolsonline.org), and Silicon Valley Japanese Entrepreneurs Network.

Dr. Osawa received his BS in electronics from Keio University, Japan, and his Ph.D. in engineering from Tohoku University, Japan.

Tsuyoshi Taira Tazan International Inc.
Tsuyoshi Taira is the CEO of Tazan International Inc, a Venture Capital and Management Consultancy Firm. Mr. Taira has been involved with a number of Silicon Valley startup companies as founding investor/director including Atmel Semiconductor (NASDAQ: ATML), Pico Power Technology Inc (acquired by Cirrus Logic), Junglee Corporation (acquired by Amazon.com, NASDAQ: AMZN), Armedia (acquired by Broadcom, NASDAQ: BRCM), Apptivity (acquired by Progress Software, NASDAQ: PRGS) and many others. He has been instrumental in providing seed stage financing, management and marketing advice, especially f or the Far Eastern market to the startup companies. Currently he serves on the boards of Silicon Storage Technology Inc. (flash memory company),, and Mino Wireless (mobile wireless), Xcidia Inc (gift e-commerce), HCD corporation(IC connectors). In addition, he is on the advisory board of Reveo (Revolutionary Electro Optics Technology Company) and several other companies. Previously, Mr. Taira was Chairman of Sanyo Semiconductor directing Sanyo’s US marketing strategy. Most of his career was spent at Sanyo Corporation except for five years when he worked at Fairchild Semiconductor. Mr. Taira graduated from Tokyo Metropolitan University with a BSEE. He also received an Honorary Doctor of Humanities from Newport Asia Pacific University in March 2000. He has published a number of books including Audio Amplifier, Transistor Physics and Application as a Co-author and most recently a book on entrepreneurship, My fellow engineer, let’s challenge from Nikkei BP.

Debra Bowen California Secretary of State
A pioneer in open government reform, election integrity, and personal privacy rights, Debra Bowen became only the sixth woman in California history elected to a statewide constitutional office when she was elected as Secretary of State in November 2006.

As the chief elections officer for the largest state in the nation, Secretary Bowen is responsible for overseeing state and federal elections, a role that also requires her to test and certify the voting equipment used in California. Her goal is to ensure that voting machines certified for use in Californians elections are secure, accurate, reliable, and accessible, and every voter’s ballot is counted exactly as it was cast. In her first year in office, Secretary Bowen commissioned an independent, top-to-bottom review of voting technology, as well as a comprehensive review of the state’s decades-old election auditing standards. Following the top-to-bottom review, Bowen strictly limited the use of direct recording electronic voting machines, and imposed significant security and auditing requirements on systems used in California elections. Secretary Bowen was recognized for her national leadership in election integrity with the 2008 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage AwardTM, the nation’s most prestigious honor for elected public servants who choose principles over partisanship.

Secretary Bowen was born in Rockford, Illinois, and graduated from Michigan State University in 1976. After earning her law degree at the University of Virginia, she practiced corporate, tax and ERISA law at Winston & Strawn in Chicago and in Washington, D.C., at the Los Angeles office of Wall Street firm Hughes, Hubbard & Reed; and as a sole practitioner in Los Angeles. Bowen first volunteered her legal services as a member of the Heal the Bay Legal Committee, and eventually her practice grew to include environmental and land use cases, as well as tax and business matters.

Secretary Bowen is married to Mark Nechodom, a research scientist and Director of Climate Science Policy with the U.S. Forest Service. She has been on Keizai Society’s Advisory Board since 2004.