Our Board of Directors

Chancellor of Showa Women’s University

Chancellor Bando graduated from the University of Tokyo and was later a visiting fellow at Harvard University. Dr. Bando joined the Prime Minister’s Office in 1969, beginning what was to be a distinguished career as a public servant. In 1995, she became vice governor of Saitama Prefecture. In 1998, she became Japan’s first female consul general with an appointment to Brisbane, Australia. In 2001, she became director-general of the General Equality Bureau of the Cabinet Office. In 2004, Showa Women’s University invited her to serve as a professor and director at its Institute for Women’s Culture. She went on to become vice president of the university in 2005 and president in 2007. In 2014, she was elected chair of Showa’s Board of Trustees, and in 2023 became chancellor of the entire Showa school system. Dr. Bando serves on numerous boards, appears regularly in the media, and has authored over 40 books, including the best-seller The Dignity of a Woman, which sold over three million copies in Japan and has been translated into several languages. She has honorary doctorates from Queensland University of Technology and Temple University Japan.

Dr. Gordon earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1981 in History and East Asian Languages after completing a B.A. from Harvard in 1975. He is the Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History at Harvard, where his teaching and research focus primarily on modern Japan. He has written, edited, or translated numerous books and has published articles in journals in the United States, Japan, Great Britain, France, and Germany. At Harvard, he has served as chair of the History Department (2004-07), director of the Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies (1998-2004 and 2010-2011), and acting director of the Asia Center (2016-2017). In 2011, while serving as director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies, Dr. Gordon led the Institute in founding the Japan Disaster Archive (http://jdarchive.org). His publications include Fabricating Consumers: The Sewing Machine in Modern Japan (2011), Nihonjin ga shiranai Matsuzaka mejaa kakumei [Matsuzaka’s Unknown Major League Revolution] (2007), A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present (2002), The Wages of Affluence: Labor and Management in Postwar Japan (1998), Postwar Japan as History (1993), Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (1991), and The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan: Heavy Industry, 1853-1955 (1985).

After graduating from Keio University in Tokyo, Japan with a degree in Economics, Mr. Hoshino started his career in the insurance business at Tokio Marine and Fire Insurance Company. At Tokio Marine, he was involved with the insurance and finance sides of the business in both domestic and international markets. His assignments included the Osaka branch office, the International Department as a manager , the Underwriting Department as a deputy general manager , and New Financial Markets as a group leader . He also spent six years at the New York branch office. In 2006, Mr. Hoshino joined Atradius Credit Insurance N.V., a multinational credit insurance company based in Amsterdam, and was appointed its legal representative for Japan and CEO of its Japan operation. In 2022, he joined Showa Women’s University as director-general at the Central Administrative Office.

Professor Akiko Imai is Dean and Professor of the Faculty of Global Business at Showa Women’s University (SWU), Japan. She also serves as Director of the SWU Institute of Current Business Studies and as a member of the SWU Institute of Women’s Culture. Her research and teaching focus on sustainability, gender equality, business and human rights, and global governance, and she leads international collaborative education initiatives with partner institutions including the University of Colorado Boulder and Business Academy Aarhus in Denmark.

Professor Imai earned her Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government as a Fulbright Scholar. Prior to joining SWU leadership, she held senior roles in international intellectual exchange and public policy, including Executive Director of the Tokyo Foundation, Managing Editor of Japan Echo, and English Editor at the Japan Foundation. She currently serves as a specially appointed Fellow of the PHP Institute.

Her academic appointments have included Visiting Researcher positions at Johns Hopkins SAIS, the University of Tokyo, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Beyond academia, she serves as Trustee of the Gojo Foundation and Executive Director of Kilimanjaro, Inc., supporting girls' education and leadership development in Tanzania. She is also the author and translator of numerous publications, including Japanese translations of several works by Robert Reich.

President of Showa Women’s University

Dr. Kanao earned a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Tokyo. He started teaching Life Aesthetics at Showa Women’s University in 1992 and later helped establish the Environmental Design Department while taking on other duties such as director of Admissions. His research topics include legible path and road design in urban environments and urban planning and community development (Machizukuri). He has been recognized in his field and won such prizes as the 5th Digital Design Competition and the Nagahama-Kanebo Town Development Competition Residential Housing Division. His numerous articles include “Route Selection in Tokyo's Road Network: A Study of Route Selection for Intra-Urban Travel by Car” (1996), “Modeling of Residable Paths: A Study on Route Choice in Intra-Urban Travel by Car” (1994), and “A Study on Route Selection for Automobile Travel in Urban Areas” (1992). Dr. Kanao has also spoken extensively on such topics as “Research into the Organizational Management of Community Development and Other Activity Groups” (2017). He was appointed as a member of the Board of Trustees and president of Showa Women’s University in 2023.

Dr. Kawahata earned her B.A. and M.A. in English and American Literature at Showa Women’s University and her Ed.D. at the Boston University School of Education. She has taught in Showa’s Department of English and American Literature and Department of International Studies for over 30 years, and currently holds the positions of professor of International Studies, dean of Faculty of International Humanities, chair of the Department of English and American Literature in the Graduate School of Letters, and research scholar at the Institute of Women’s Culture. Dr. Kawahata has published numerous articles, including “Introducing World Literature: And Then There Were None” (2010), “College Life and the Image of Women as Represented in College Fiction” (2007), and “Repressed Narratives and the Road to Self-Made Woman in The Promised Land” (2006), and co-authored several books, including Literature, Labor and America (2010), College Fiction: The Image of Women and College Life in American Literature (2010), and The World of William Styron (2008). In addition, she has contributed to the partial translation of American Literature: The Essential Glossary by Stephen Matterson in 2010. She also serves as a member of Showa Women’s University’s Board of Trustees.

Mr. Mokkoh graduated from Keio University with a degree in Business & Commerce in1980.  He started his career with Citibank Tokyo Branch as an account officer of airlines companies. He moved to JP. Morgan Tokyo Branch as an account officer of automobile companies and others.   He joined Prudential-Bache Tokyo Branch as the head of the Derivatives Department in 1987 and in the following year, moved to New York Headquarters in charge of Asian region business.   Together with Citibank/Prudential-Bache colleagues, he established Sakura Global Capital, which is a derivative subsidiary of Sakura Bank (currently Mitsui Sumitomo Bank) in 1990 and became the Chief Representative of its Tokyo Representative Office. He moved to HK to establish another subsidiary, Sakura Global Capital Asia Limited, as the President in 1994.  He retuned to Tokyo in 1998 to establish Rabo Securities Asia B.V. Tokyo Branch (a securities company of Rabobank in Netherland) as Branch Manager and become the County Manager after it obtained the banking license from the Ministry of Finance in Japan.  He moved to New York in 2001 with his family and took the position as Advisor to Marubeni America Corporation for its M&A business.  He led several acquisitions and served as the board of directors for the acquired companies such as Advantage Funding Management Inc. in New York (a largest commercial vehicle finance company in the U.S.A) and Westlake Financial Service in Los Angeles (one of the largest sub-prime auto finance companies in the U.S.A.).  In 2017, he retired from Marubeni America Corporation. In March 2026, he joined Showa Women’s University to serve as member of the board of Showa Boston Institute.

President of Showa Boston Institute

Dr. Stronach earned his M.A. MALD, and Ph.D. at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1980 after completing his B.A. at Keene State College in 1974. He has spent his entire career in Japanese and American institutions of higher education, including serving as an assistant professor at Tokyo’s Keio University and as a researcher at Keio’s Shimbun Kenkyujo and Sangyou Kenkyujo; professor of Japanese Studies and dean of the International Relations program at the International University of Japan; COO, provost, and acting president of Becker College in Worcester, Massachusetts; president of Yokohama City University; and dean of Temple University’s campus in Japan (TUJ). Among other positions, he has also served as the vice chair of the Japanese University Accreditation Association; Advisory Group Member at the United Sates – Japan Conference on Educational and Cultural Interchange (CULCON) Education Task Force; and as a member of the Tsukuba University Advisory Council. Dr. Stronach has authored and co-authored several books and numerous articles on Japan and Japanese higher education, including The History of Temple University Japan: An Experiment in International Education (2023), Globalization: The Future of Japan and the World (2022), and Beyond the Rising Sun: Nationalism in Contemporary Japan (1995). Dr. Stronach was appointed president of Showa Boston Institute in 2023.

Dr. Hiroe Tsubaki is an applied statistician. He received his Master’s degree in 1982 from the Department of Mathematical Engineering and Information Physics, Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo, and earned his Doctor of Engineering degree in 1988. He began his academic career as a Research Associate in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, and later served as Lecturer at Keio University and Professor at the Graduate School of Business Sciences, University of Tsukuba, where he also chaired the Graduate School of Systems Management and the MBA Program in International Business.In 2005, Dr. Tsubaki was appointed Director of the Risk Analysis Research Center at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics. He became Professor at the Institute in 2007, Vice Director-General in 2010, and Director-General from 2019 to 2025. From 2015 to 2019, he also served as President of the National Statistics Center, an incorporated administrative agency under the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Through these roles, he has made extensive contributions to quality management, official statistics, and evidence-based policy making. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Tsukuba, the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI, and the Institute of Statistical Mathematics.Dr. Tsubaki has held major leadership positions in academic societies, including President of the Japanese Society of Applied Statistics, the Japanese Federation of Statistical Science Associations, the Japanese Society for Quality Control, the Robust Quality Engineering Society, the Japan Society for Suicide Prevention, and the Association of Health Data Scientists. He currently serves as President of the Transdisciplinary Federation of Science and Technology, a federation of 35 academic societies, where he promotes transdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge integration to address complex social issues.In the public sector, Dr. Tsubaki has contributed to the development of Japan’s statistical system as Chair of the Statistics Commission of Japan. Internationally, he served as the founding Chair of ISO/TC 69/SC 8 from 2009 to 2018, promoting the international standardization of statistical methods for new technology and product development. In 2021, he received the Deming Prize for Individuals in recognition of his long-standing contributions to total quality management. Since April 2026, Dr. Tsubaki has served as Chair of the Board of Trustees of Showa Women’s University. In this role, he is committed to advancing international education, including the mission of Showa Boston, and fostering professionals who can contribute to global society.

Mr. Yoshikawa graduated from International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan, and completed the AMP at Harvard Business School. He joined Mitsubishi Corporation in 1997 and held such positions as manager at the Bahrain office and the Atlanta office, assistant general manager in the Regional Coordination Dept, executive assistant to the President & CEO, general manager of the Singapore Branch; general manager of the Regional Strategy & Coordination Department, senior vice-president and general manager of the Global Strategy & Coordination Department, senior vice-president and chief regional officer of Middle East, United Arab Emirates office, and executive vice-president and regional CEO for Middle East & Central Asia. After retiring from Mitsubishi Corporation, Mr. Yoshikawa became a corporate advisor at Mitsubishi Research Institute, and became its executive vice president, COO, and senior corporate advisor. Since 2021, he has been serving as an advisor to the chancellor and visiting professor (department of Business Design), research fellow at the Institute of Current Business Studies) at Showa Women’s University. He is also vice chairman and the executive director of the Japan Singapore Association and its outside director.