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Japan's Top Business Interviews Podcast By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Dr. Greg Story
Japan's Top Business Interviews is the premier business interview podcast for people who want to know more about business in japan. The guests cover a range of industries and organisation sizes, to present a thorough overview of issues with leading in Japan. If you are a leader, especialy someone leading in Japan, then this is the podcast for you.
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- 2 days ago25 min
295 Laura Bonamici - Round Two - Former Global Head of Marketing, Fujitsu
Laura Bonamici - Former Global Head of Marketing, Fujitsu "Leadership is increasingly an act of translation." "The role of leadership was not to force speed, it was to create the conditions where speed could emerge." "Perfection was never the problem, but waiting for it was." "You become geographically global, but you're remaining intellectually domestic." "Ultimately, what you leave behind is that beating heart, and you leave that through people." Laura Bonamici is the former Global Head of Marketing for Fujitsu and spent four years in Japan helping lead major transformation within one of the country's best-known technology companies. Born and raised in Sardinia, Italy, she built her career almost entirely outside her home country. After completing university, she moved to the United Kingdom, then Germany and eventually Japan. She describes her career as one of "leading away from home", repeatedly operating as an outsider who must understand a new environment while still delivering organisational results. Her original assignment in Japan was expected to last around 18 months, but the scale and complexity of the transformation extended her stay to four years. During that period, Fujitsu was pursuing an ambitious mid-term plan and expanding its Uvance digital services portfolio, with marketing playing an important role in the company's transformation. Japan ultimately forced Bonamici to question leadership approaches that had previously worked successfully elsewhere. The experience strengthened her belief that effective global leadership depends upon understanding context, translating between different perspectives and bringing people with you through change. Laura Bonamici's lessons about leadership in Japan begin somewhere unexpected: mushroom hunting in Sardinia. As a teenager, she would accompany her father into the woods at six o'clock in the morning. It did not matter how late she had stayed out the previous night. If she had promised to go, she was expected to be standing at the door on time. The first lesson was trust: if people cannot rely on your word, nothing else works. Her father also taught her not to rush into the woods searching for mushrooms. First, they stopped, crouched down and allowed their eyes to adjust to the colours, light and patterns around them. The lesson she later carried into leadership was equally simple: without understanding context, people often cannot see what is actually there. Her four years leading transformation in Japan brought those childhood lessons back into focus. Bonamici describes modern leadership as an "act of translation". She is not referring simply to translating Japanese into English or vice versa. Leaders must translate contexts, perspectives and competing realities so that people can understand what change means and move forward together. One of the biggest tensions she encountered was stability versus speed. Japanese organisations possess formidable strengths in structure, process, alignment, consistency and execution. Yet technology cycles are shortening, AI has become a standard copilot and markets can change in months rather than years. Simply demanding greater speed from a system designed around careful execution can generate resistance. Bonamici instead created protected spaces where small cross-functional teams could experiment, learn and make mistakes. Speed was not imposed on the wider organisation. New approaches were tested, demonstrated and then scaled. Communication also required recalibration. Important ideas were often shaped through relationships, trust and smaller conversations rather than created inside large meetings. Small groups could explore ideas before larger forums validated decisions and accelerated implementation. The second tension was precision versus progress. Japan's commitment to quality encourages organisations to get things right before moving. Transformation, however, often requires learning while moving. In Fujitsu's marketing application of AI, Bonamici did not dismiss legitimate concerns about governance, accuracy and risk. Her team started with focused, lower-risk use cases and made the learning visible. The question gradually moved from "Is this perfect?" towards "What are we learning and how can we improve it?" A third tension involved global ambition versus local reality. Bonamici describes what she calls "Japan-to-Japan gl
- 1 weeks ago56 min
294 Philippe Sommer - CEO, Aon Reinsurance Solutions Japan
"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." "One of the things that I think helps is that you show that you're not working for yourself, but you're working for the team." "You need to be very mindful about who you interact with and how you bring the message to where you want it." "You need to show up and be in front of the client and live what you preach." "Be curious about people, connect with people. Be ready to spend some time on that." Philippe Sommer is CEO of Aon Reinsurance Solutions Japan and an experienced international insurance and reinsurance executive whose career has taken him from Switzerland to the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. Sommer began his career with Swiss Re, one of the world's largest reinsurance companies. After initially working with international European clients, he moved to the United States before being offered an opportunity in Japan in the aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima disaster. At the time, Japan's insurance industry had an acute need for international reinsurance expertise. In his first Japan assignment with Swiss Re, Sommer led sales activities and a team of approximately 40 people. After four years, he returned to Europe before an opportunity emerged to return to Japan with Aon, this time operating from a different part of the insurance and reinsurance value chain. His experience leading in Japan has required considerable adaptability. Sommer has learned that effective leadership cannot simply be transplanted from a Western corporate environment. Understanding hierarchy, nemawashi, indirect communication, client dedication, consensus building, patience and the importance of personal relationships has been central to his approach. As a Swiss executive working for global organisations in Japan, Sommer sees himself as an important translator between headquarters and the Japanese organisation: explaining to global leaders why Japan sometimes needs a different approach while also explaining to Japanese colleagues why not everything can be different from global standards. Narrative Summary Philippe Sommer's experience leading in Japan illustrates why successful global leadership is less about importing a proven management formula and more about learning how people around you actually think, communicate and make decisions. Sommer arrived in Japan through the world of reinsurance. Following the devastating 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Japan required significant international reinsurance expertise. Having worked in Switzerland and the United States, Sommer accepted the opportunity to move to Japan and eventually found himself leading a substantial sales organisation. One of his earliest lessons concerned communication. Japanese expressions that appear positive or ambiguous to a Western executive can carry a very different meaning. A response such as "maybe" may actually represent an extremely strong "no". Translation alone therefore does not solve the problem. Leaders need interpretation: an understanding of the context and intention behind the words. Hierarchy presented another adjustment. Western executives may be accustomed to relatively flat organisations and feel comfortable contacting anyone necessary to achieve an outcome. In Japan, bypassing a counterpart and approaching that person's boss can cause embarrassment, loss of face and damaged trust. Sommer learned that respecting organisational relationships is essential. Yet Japanese hierarchy operates alongside nemawashi. Decisions may ultimately be approved at the top, but the groundwork is often built from below. People who will execute a decision need to be involved before the decision becomes official. Skipping that process can make implementation substantially harder. Sommer consequently favours what he describes as a "pull" rather than "push" leadership style. Instead of simply telling employees how something must be achieved, leaders can establish the desired outcome and then involve colleagues in determining how to reach it. This requires patience, but it produces understanding, involvement and commitment. Trust is built through similar behaviour. Sommer believes leaders need to demonstrate that they are working for the team and for the client rather than themselves. Leading by example matters. A leader should be visible in front of clients, participate in the work and demonstrate the behaviour expected fr
- 2 weeks ago1h 7m
293 Doru Tasca - President and Representative Director, ZF Group Japan
"The very first thing that you have to do as a leader in Japan is to make yourself a team member." "You have to show them that you're here because you want to lead Japan, not because you want to lead." "Don't ask anyone to do anything you wouldn't do yourself." "You have to get to a level where you can show both knowledge and humility." "Once you show your people a path... they will follow you." Doru Tasca is President and Representative Director of ZF Group in Japan, combining more than three decades of life in Japan with extensive leadership experience in the automotive industry. Born and raised in Romania, Tasca came to Japan at eighteen after winning a Japanese government Monbusho scholarship. He spent his first year studying Japanese at Osaka University of Foreign Studies before completing his university education in Japan. That early immersion gave him not only fluency in Japanese but also a deep familiarity with the cultural assumptions underpinning Japanese business. After initially teaching English, Tasca entered the automotive industry in 2005 with Japanese company Witech in Hiroshima, beginning in R&D before moving into sales and programme management. He subsequently joined Visteon and later Continental, where he worked extensively in automated and assisted driving technologies including cameras, radar and lidar. Tasca joined ZF in 2020 as Key Account Executive for Toyota. His responsibilities expanded until he became Head of Sales for ZF Japan at the beginning of 2025 and subsequently President and Representative Director, while retaining his sales leadership responsibilities. His career has been shaped by his ability to operate comfortably between Japanese and Western business cultures. Rather than treating Japan as a temporary overseas assignment, Tasca describes Japan as his home and believes effective foreign leadership requires understanding the language, culture, customers and people from the inside. Narrative Summary Leading successfully in Japan requires much more than importing global management practices and expecting local employees to adapt. For Doru Tasca, President and Representative Director of ZF Group Japan, effective leadership begins with becoming part of the team. Tasca's perspective comes from an unusual career. Arriving from Romania at eighteen on a Japanese government scholarship, he learned Japanese, studied in Japan and eventually built his entire professional career there. His first automotive role was inside a traditional Japanese company, where he experienced Japanese corporate life from the bottom upwards before moving into multinational organisations including Visteon, Continental and ZF. That background taught him an important lesson: Western leadership habits cannot simply be transplanted into Japan. Consensus building and nemawashi matter. Leaders must understand how decisions are developed and gain acceptance rather than relying solely on positional authority. Credibility also comes from being willing to do the work. Tasca believes leaders initially need to get their hands dirty so they understand what their teams actually do. Delegation should come later and must be explained carefully. Employees need to understand that work is being delegated because the leader trusts them and wants them to grow, not because the boss simply wants to unload unwanted tasks. This philosophy extends to decision-making. Tasca asks his management team to investigate problems, consult their teams, develop alternatives and return with a recommendation. If he accepts their recommendation, responsibility is shared. If he overrides it, he takes responsibility himself. This creates psychological safety around decisions while still encouraging ownership. Trust is another recurring theme. Tasca sees reputation as one of the most valuable assets anyone possesses in Japanese business. Trust takes considerable time to build and can be destroyed remarkably quickly. Leaders therefore need to demonstrate reliability through behaviour. Tasca attends meetings alongside his people, joins them when customer problems occur and makes himself visible throughout the organisation. Employees must see that their leader works with them rather than merely issuing instructions. He also emphasises accessibility. As president, he deliberately walks around the office and speaks with employees, even when the interaction lasts only thirty seconds. Japanese employees can be reluctant to approach senior leaders with pro
- 3 weeks ago59 min
292 Frederic Delsaux - Representative Director, PTS Japan
"You can't tell them to stop smoking if you have a cigarette in your mouth." "I think it's all about communication." "You need to expose them, but don't throw them into the lion's cage." "First, learn Japanese." "Trust and communication. You cannot govern by emails or rules. You need to talk. You need to explain." Frederic Delsaux is Representative Director of PTS Japan, a project management and consulting company supporting foreign and domestic organisations with construction, audiovisual, infrastructure and IT projects in Japan, as well as managed services after project completion. His connection with Japan stretches back to his university years in France, where he specialised in the Japanese economy. Attracted by Japan's economic importance and its reputation for automobiles, electronics and manufacturing, he arrived in Japan around the end of 1989 and beginning of the 1990s, just as the bubble economy was beginning to collapse. His career in Japan began far removed from project management. He initially managed a French restaurant, where the necessity of communicating with Japanese customers and colleagues pushed him to learn Japanese. He later joined an import-export trading company before representing a French telecommunications hardware company in Japan. After the local branch manager suddenly departed, Delsaux was offered responsibility for the operation and effectively moved into leadership almost overnight. His telecommunications work brought him into contact with PTS during the early stages of its Japan operation. After seven to eight years with the telecommunications company, he joined PTS, initially in technical sales for telephony, before moving through sales and director-level responsibilities. He has now spent more than two decades with PTS. In April 2020, as COVID-19 was beginning to reshape business globally, the Japanese management team completed a management buyout from the UK parent organisation. PTS Japan became part of a Japanese-owned group while retaining the established PTS brand. Delsaux's career consequently spans technical sales, client management, organisational leadership, business ownership and the challenge of adapting global project-management practices to Japanese business realities. Frederic Delsaux's leadership career in Japan demonstrates how credibility, communication and cultural adaptability can matter more than hierarchy alone. Having lived and worked in Japan since around the beginning of the 1990s, he has experienced the country through the collapse of the bubble economy, the Lehman shock, COVID-19, labour shortages and major changes in Japanese attitudes towards lifetime employment. PTS Japan specialises in project management across construction, audiovisual, infrastructure and IT projects. The business also provides managed services after projects are completed. Following a management buyout in April 2020, the Japanese operation became locally owned, while continuing to use the established PTS brand. Delsaux's route into leadership was unconventional. After studying the Japanese economy in France, he came to Japan and managed a French restaurant. Japanese was essential because the people around him did not speak French or English. He subsequently moved into trading and telecommunications. When a branch manager suddenly departed, he was offered leadership of the Japanese operation almost overnight. Speaking Japanese helped him gain trust among local employees, establishing an early lesson that language proficiency can carry cultural and leadership significance far beyond simple translation. At PTS, credibility came partly from experience and client relationships. Engineers and consultants knew that Delsaux understood the commercial environment and could communicate with decision-makers. His leadership philosophy nevertheless extends beyond expertise. As technology becomes more complex, leaders cannot be the deepest technical expert in every discipline. Instead, managers add value through communication, problem solving, risk reduction and helping technical specialists successfully navigate client relationships. That is particularly important because engineers increasingly need to operate directly in front of customers. Delsaux believes technical professionals should be progressively exposed to these situations rather than simply thrown into them. Supported experience builds confidence until the individual can communicate solutions independently. Trust is equally central. His analogy is memorable:
- Aug 21, 202659 min
291 Anatole Varin — Founder and President, The Plant
"Trusting people to do things and respecting them and not micromanaging them has been essential to our culture." "If you believe in somebody and you respect them, they start to feel confident in their ability to do that thing." "If people feel they have a lot of autonomy in their work, they will naturally be coming with ideas." "AI is a power tool for us, and if we are not the craftsmen with the best use of these power tools, we are going to be in trouble." "Leadership is creating the environment for people to be successful." Anatole Varin is the Founder and President of The Plant, an enterprise commerce technology company that builds and operates custom digital commerce systems for global companies entering Japan and Japanese companies expanding internationally. The Plant develops its own technology stack rather than acting solely as a systems integrator, giving it greater control over speed, quality, security and localisation. Varin came to Japan in his late twenties after living in France, Spain, Brazil and the United States. He initially worked in education and later completed a master's degree in commerce in Nagoya. While researching a portal project for small and medium-sized enterprises in Aichi, he taught himself programming and became deeply involved in the early Internet economy. He went on to co-found GaijinPot, where he served as a one-person technology team responsible for coding, design and server management. After selling his interest, he founded The Plant more than twenty years ago. The company grew from a small Japan-based development business into an international organisation of roughly 100 people, with major development capability in China and an Australian presence. His career is defined by self-directed technical learning, entrepreneurship, trust-based growth and the gradual transition from individual maker to organisational leader. Anatole Varin's path to entrepreneurship in Japan was neither linear nor heavily planned. He arrived in his late twenties simply because Japan seemed interesting, worked in education and later pursued a master's degree in commerce in Nagoya. His thesis project involved building an online portal for small and medium-sized enterprises in Aichi at a time when the commercial Internet was only beginning to take shape. With little formal technical education, he taught himself to code by buying books, experimenting constantly and building the system from scratch. That work led to GaijinPot, the portal for foreigners living and working in Japan. As the sole technical person, Varin wrote the code, managed the servers and handled design. The experience gave him a powerful taste for speed and autonomy: he could have an idea and place it into production within days because there were few dependencies and nobody blocking execution. When he later founded The Plant, he initially expected to create consumer-facing online businesses. Several failed. As cash tightened, he began accepting development work from companies that knew his capabilities, and the business gradually evolved towards enterprise commerce systems. The Plant's growth was built largely through word-of-mouth. In enterprise technology, a mistake can directly damage a client's operations, so trust is fundamental. Large consulting brands often act as a proxy for trust; Varin had no such brand. Instead, he relied on personal reputation, repeat delivery, the quality of his developers and independent audits and certifications. Over time, clients who had experienced the company's speed and reliability recommended it to others. The company also differentiated itself by building and controlling its own technology stack. Many technology projects are slowed by chains of consultants, subcontractors and global platform owners. The people doing the work can be far removed from the product, while local Japan requirements compete with requests from dozens of other markets. By keeping development close to the customer and controlling the underlying technology, The Plant can respond faster, localise effectively and maintain security and quality. Its expansion into China was driven less by market entry than by access to a deep pool of engineering talent, while the Australian presence grew from the long-term relationship with its founding CTO. Varin's greatest leadership challenge was the transition from doing everything himself to working through other people. His natural preference is to build, move quickly and avoid unnecessary friction. Leadership, however, requires explaining the vision, motivating others and accepting that people need context rather than merely watching
- Aug 14, 20261h 13m
290 James Marsden — Head of Post-Trade, Asia Pacific, Broadridge Financial Solutions
"Leadership is a continual journey of getting better and knowing the right techniques to enable people around you to be successful." "The trick is to listen to the clients because they have problems, and they are going to tell you what keeps them up at night." "Giving people knowledge is something that enables them to grow in their career." "Never waste a mistake or an opportunity to learn something from what happened." "Leadership is about showing the way, knowing the way and giving people space." James Marsden is Head of Post-Trade, Asia Pacific, at Broadridge Financial Solutions, based in Tokyo. Broadridge provides technology platforms and infrastructure supporting major banks, broker-dealers, asset managers and other financial institutions across front-office, middle-office, post-trade and investor communications activities. Marsden joined the company in London in 1996, initially working as an engineer, programmer and systems designer. He came to Japan in 2000 to help deploy Broadridge technology for JPMorgan's investment banking business. Following the collapse of the dot-com bubble, the Tokyo office contracted dramatically, and at the age of 29 he was asked to run the Japan business. His combination of technical knowledge, project management experience, commercial awareness and Japanese-language ability made him unusually well equipped for the role. He subsequently held broader business development and regional leadership responsibilities and now oversees post-trade teams across Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. His career illustrates adaptability in Japan, long-term client relationship building, technical-to-commercial progression and the development of a coaching-oriented leadership style. James Marsden's leadership career developed through necessity rather than formal succession planning. He began as an engineer and programmer at Broadridge in London, moved to Tokyo to support a major client implementation and, after the dot-com downturn reduced the local operation from roughly 20 or 30 people to four, was asked to lead the Japan business at just 29. He knew the platform, could speak with Japanese clients, understood delivery and had enough commercial judgement to distinguish between contracted service, maintenance and chargeable work. What he did not have was formal leadership training. That early experience shaped a practical philosophy: leadership is never finished. It is a continual process of learning how to equip people with knowledge, give them room to operate and create a circle of safety in which they can learn and make mistakes without being abandoned. Marsden's technical expertise initially gave him credibility with employees and clients. As his scope expanded, direct technical knowledge became less available, so his role shifted towards coaching—sharing how he would approach a problem without micromanaging the person responsible for solving it. Client listening was central to rebuilding the Japanese business from four people to around 60. Marsden argues that customers usually articulate their problems, not the solution. The leader's task is to understand what keeps them awake, combine technical and creative thinking, and bring together the internal support required to deliver an answer. This also demands 'leading up': selling the opportunity internally and ensuring senior management stands behind the local team. His approach to hiring reflects the same developmental mindset. Broadridge sought intelligent, analytical people who wanted to learn, including graduates whose potential might not be visible in a conventional Japanese interview. Analytical testing helped identify problem-solving capability beyond polished self-presentation. The company could then offer something distinctive: the opportunity to become a global subject-matter expert in specialised areas of securities processing rather than rotate anonymously through a large organisation. Marsden sees culture as something employees experience through behaviour. Leaders must give people space, lead by example and keep the client at the centre. In Japan, smaller meetings, dinners and informal conversations often create more candid communication than large English-language town halls. Foreign leaders should not force employees to speak English when doing so suppresses ideas. They should allow people to communicate in the language and format that produces the best contribution, listen carefully and make room before offering their own opinion. Broadridge's global purpose—to help clients operate, innovate and grow—and its CREATE values provide a North
- Aug 7, 20261h 6m
289 Thomas Fraessle - Representative Director and CEO, ITK Engineering Japan
"Leading is empowering, guiding, inspiring and having a shared goal of working together." "You need to build up trust, and for me what really helped was the one-on-ones." "Nobody wants to have a surprise in the meeting." "Predictability is really important for any leader." "Leadership is bringing your people forward and putting them in the position where they can perform at their best." Thomas Fraessle is the Representative Director and CEO of ITK Engineering Japan, a professional engineering services company that develops customised software and systems solutions across automotive, healthcare, railway and other technology-intensive sectors. ITK originated in Germany and later became part of the Bosch Group. Fraessle studied electrical engineering and completed his diploma thesis at Mercedes-Benz, working on vehicle energy simulation and battery sizing. He then joined ITK when it was still a relatively small engineering company, attracted by the chance to work across varied projects rather than enter a large corporation. After assignments supporting General Motors Europe, he asked for an opportunity to work abroad and chose Japan precisely because it was unfamiliar and culturally distant from his previous experience. He first arrived in Japan in 2008, worked through a local partner and helped initiate the establishment of ITK's own Japanese operation. After returning to Germany and developing his leadership experience, he came back to Japan in February 2022 as Representative Director and CEO. His career reflects adaptability across engineering, business development and people leadership, as well as the transition from individual technical contributor to cross-cultural organisational leader. Thomas Fraessle's leadership journey in Japan began with curiosity rather than a carefully mapped expatriate career. After studying electrical engineering and completing a practical diploma thesis at Mercedes-Benz, he joined the then-small ITK Engineering because he wanted exposure to multiple projects and responsibilities. An assignment supporting General Motors Europe introduced him to international collaboration and prompted him to ask ITK's founder for an overseas opportunity. Given a choice between the United States and Japan, he selected Japan because it represented the more unfamiliar challenge. That first period in Japan, beginning in 2008, gave Fraessle direct experience as an engineer working with Japanese customers. More than a decade later, he returned as the head of ITK Engineering Japan. The country was familiar, but the responsibility was entirely different. As CEO, he had to build alignment, create trust, communicate direction and encourage people to speak candidly. He quickly discovered that leadership concepts such as motivation, feedback and empowerment do not travel unchanged across cultures. One of the sharpest differences was feedback. In Germany, direct feedback could be treated as a normal part of improving performance. In Japan, the word itself could sound negative, as though a leader was about to explain what an employee had done badly. Fraessle found that honest views rarely appeared automatically in group meetings. He therefore invested in repeated one-to-one conversations, asking not simply what was wrong, but how the team could improve something together and what support people needed from him. Trust accumulated gradually, and some changes required a full year of discussion and preparation. This experience led him to appreciate nemawashi—the groundwork conducted before a formal decision. In many Western meetings, participants debate an issue and decide in the room. In Japan, the visible meeting may be the final confirmation of extensive prior consultation. Fraessle learned to plant ideas, explain them more than once, listen to objections and allow people time to reach confidence in the direction. Although the process can seem slow, it can produce stronger implementation because surprises and unresolved resistance have been reduced beforehand. Trust is also reinforced through transparency and predictability. Fraessle explains not only KPIs and decisions, but the business reasoning behind them. He distinguishes explanation from excuse-making: the leader should own the decision rather than hide behind headquarters. He is also willing to acknowledge mistakes, viewing this as strength rather than weakness. Employees need to know that problems can be raised without anger, blame or humiliation. A leader whose reactions vary with mood creates hesitation; a consistent leader makes it safer to speak up. Fraessle translated t
- Aug 2, 20261h 9m
288 Noriko Sasaki — Country Head, Checkout.com Japan
"The most important thing for a leader, in my view, is integrity." "You need to be hands-on, but then you need to delegate." "If this fails, ultimately, the accountability sits with me." "Culture is something that all of us jointly develop and nurture." "At the end of the day, you have to own your decisions, so you cannot just let AI make Noriko Sasaki is Country Head of Checkout.com Japan, leading the UK-based payment service provider's expansion in the Japanese market. Checkout.com helps online merchants, gaming companies and digital platforms process payments, improve acceptance rates, receive settlement funds and use payments as a driver of growth and profitability. Sasaki was born in Saitama and spent part of her childhood in Los Angeles when her father was assigned to American Honda. Returning to Japan as a teenager, she rebuilt her Japanese literacy, entered a leading Tokyo high school through a returnee pathway and later studied political science at Waseda University. She began her career in international consulting, working on business-process reengineering and SAP implementation, before earning an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. After returning to Japan, she worked at Walt Disney and then spent close to twenty years at Citibank, where she led major sales operations and participated in the historic transfer of Citi's Japanese retail-banking business into SMBC Trust Bank. She later held roles at Accenture, PwC and a Japanese consulting start-up before joining Checkout.com in November 2024. Her career combines consulting discipline, financial-services leadership, operational transformation, bicultural communication and a long-standing commitment to advancing women in leadership. Noriko Sasaki's leadership journey has been shaped by repeated transitions across cultures, industries and organisational models. Born in Japan and raised partly in Los Angeles, she returned at fifteen with strong spoken Japanese but limited reading ability. Re-entering the Japanese education system required intensive study, adaptability and resilience. That bicultural experience later became a professional advantage, allowing her to move between Japanese context and international corporate expectations. After studying political science at Waseda University, Sasaki entered international consulting, where she worked on business-process reengineering, operational standardisation and SAP implementation. She eventually questioned whether advice based mainly on frameworks was enough without experience inside a company. An MBA at Carnegie Mellon gave her a broader business foundation, after which she returned to Japan, joined Walt Disney and then moved into banking through a major Citi integration project. Her first substantive people-management role came at Citi. The team was small and entirely female, and one early challenge was managing someone older, more experienced and more knowledgeable about banking. Sasaki responded with humility and respect rather than relying on title. She clarified that both people had different responsibilities, maintained a continuous dialogue and focused the team on a shared goal. That approach became a recurring leadership principle: alignment requires over-communication, clear accountability and respect for expertise at every level. Sasaki later led Citi's branch sales organisation and became closely involved in the transfer of the Japanese retail bank into SMBC Trust Bank. The experience taught her how to translate vision into strategy, strategy into action and action into clearly assigned responsibility. She also learned that senior leaders cannot remain distant from operations. At times, she worked directly on front-line tasks and took customer calls to understand the real issues. The challenge is to remain sufficiently hands-on to retain credibility while delegating enough to expand the organisation's capacity. Her delegation model is structured rather than passive. Before assigning work, she checks the timeline, capacity, assumptions and direction. She asks for interim updates well before completion so that course corrections do not arrive at the final moment and destroy motivation. The employee retains room to execute, but Sasaki remains accountable for the outcome. That air cover matters in a Japanese environment where fear of mistakes can discourage initiative. Innovation similarly depends on lowering the barrier to contribution. Sasaki uses brainstorming rules that give everyone an equal opportunity to speak and explicitly reject the idea of a stupid suggestion. She reminds teams that improvement does not always require a dr
About Japan's Top Business Interviews Podcast By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Japan's Top Business Interviews is the premier business interview podcast for people who want to know more about business in japan. The guests cover a range of industries and organisation sizes, to present a thorough overview of issues with leading in Japan. If you are a leader, especialy someone leading in Japan, then this is the podcast for you.
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