Mitsuru Izumo is Owner and Chief Executive Officer of Euglena, a venture capital company spun off from a research laboratory at the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Agriculture. In December 2005, Euglena became the first and only company in the world to successfully mass culture euglena, a microscopic organism, in outdoor conditions. Previously, he worked for the Bank of Tokyo Mistubishi. Izumo graduated from the University of Tokyo's Agricultural and Life Sciences Department.

Masami Komatsu is President and Chief Executive Officer of Music Securities, a Japanese crowdsourcing company that provides micro-investment platforms that connects individual investors and local business in Japan, including raising funds for a leading Japanese hip-hop artist, a sake brewery, professional sports teams and local companies, while expanding business collaborations with local banks. Music Securities set up Securite Disaster Area Support Funds following the Great East Japan Earthquake, which raised more than $10 million from 29,000 people to support damaged companies in earthquake-hit areas. The company also offers micro-financing loans in Cambodia and Vietnam, and recently worked with Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on a project that supports farmers in Peru. Komatsu was a professional drummer and composer. He has a degree in accounting and law from the Waseda University Graduate School of Finance in Japan.

James Kondo is Chairman of International House of Japan, an independent foundation committed to fostering international dialogue and understanding.
Kondo is also President of Asia Pacific Initiative, Co-Chair of Silicon Valley Japan Platform, and Visiting Professor at Keio Medical School.
Previously, Kondo was Vice President of Twitter Inc and Chairman of Twitter Japan. He was also Special Advisor to the Cabinet Office of the Japanese Government and a consultant at McKinsey.
Within the World Economic Forum, Kondo was selected a Young Global Leader and serves as Co-Chair of World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Japan. Kondo also co-founded Table for Two, a global initiative launched at Davos to simultaneously address global hunger and obesity.
Kondo studied at Brown University, graduated from Keio University and Harvard Business School, and was a Yale World Fellow.

Upon election to the position of Mayor of the City of Otsu, a prefectural capital with over 340,000 residents, became the youngest woman ever to be elected mayor of a Japanese City. Since taking office, has focused on issues related to gender equality and childcare. LLB and LLM, Hokkaido University; LLM, Harvard Law School. Visiting Fellow, Columbia Business School. Practised law at Nishiura & Asahi, Tokyo and Debevoise & Plimpton, NYC.

Masao Kayama has extensive experience in various roles and industries. As Head of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) in the Next-Generation Energy Business Group at Mitsubishi Corporation, he successfully launched the CDR business from scratch and has been leading investments and business developments in CDR technologies. In addition, he is Co-Founder of the NextGen CDR Facility, a groundbreaking global advance market commitment facility aiming to purchase over 1 million CDRs by 2025. Kayama’s expertise extends to carbon management strategy as Deputy General Manager of the Carbon Management Team at Mitsubishi Corporation. He actively contributes to national initiatives, serving as a member of the Study Group on Preparation of Carbon Credits for Carbon Neutrality under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and also international initiative as a Steering Committee Member of the CCS+ Initiative. Prior to these roles, he held positions in business development and M&A in the mining division of Mitsubishi Development Pty Ltd and gained valuable on-site training as a mining engineer at Rio Tinto. His early experience includes working as a sales representative for battery raw materials at Mitsubishi Corporation.

Shoukei Matsumoto
Buddhist Monk
Chair & Co-Founder of Interbeing.
Founder of Institute of Temple Management
Visiting Professor at Musashino University, Japan
Alumni of Young Global Leaders from World Economic Forum (2013)

Shoukei Matsumoto received his BA in Philosophy at The University of Tokyo in Japan and MBA at Indian School of Business in India as an Ambassadorial Scholar of Rotary Foundation. He has notably published A Monk's Guide to Clean a House and Mind in more than seventeen languages, among other books. Matsumoto has also translated books, including Roman Krznaric's The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World. He has held lectures and workshops internationally, and has been featured on publications including the Japan Times, the Guardian and the Forbes Japan, which highlights Matsumoto as one of the "100 Hopes to Save the World" on its June 2023 issue.

Yasukane is the founder and CEO of Josys, a startup established in 2021 that is revolutionizing the hybrid work environment by providing automated IT device and SaaS management solutions worldwide. The company raised USD125M within its first two years.

Yasukane founded Raksul in 2009 after a stint at A.T. Kearney. Raksul, a leader in the sharing economy, specializes in online printing services and became Japan’s largest online printing provider. The company went public in 2018 with a billion dollar market cap. Yasukane’s leadership at Raksul earned him top honors in Forbes’ Entrepreneur Ranking in 2017, and the company was featured in a Harvard Business School case study in 2019. He was also selected Young Global Leaders in World Economic Forum. He has served as Chairman of Raksul since 2023.

Born 1970.
Spent Childhood living in South Africa.
Started her first venture, AGASTA, a company exporting second hand cars to the world, at the age of 26. She was the youngest woman in Japan who made her company public.
2014, she formed People Worldwide co.,Ltd, a cross border Man power agency.
2017, she formed WORK JAPAN Co.,Ltd providing services
dedicated to foreigners living in Japan.
​Selected as, Young Global Leader/World Economic Forum 2005
Women of the Year 2005
Independent Director at BASE Inc (TSE 4477)

Akiko Naka is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Wantedly, a social networking service for professionals. Following its official launch in February 2012, Wantedly grew to 2.5 million monthly active users and 30,000 corporations. Wantedly has become the leading professional social networking service in Japan. Naka was the youngest female founder to take a company public in Japan.

Yusuke Narita is an economist, (social) entrepreneur, and public speaker/writer working across multiple countries and fields. He is an Assistant Professor at Yale University in the US and the founder of the startup Hanjuku-kaso Inc. in Japan. As a researcher, he develops methods that use algorithm, data, and evidence to improve social decision making. He deploys his research output to solve real-world business and policy problems, especially education and health policy issues. He is also active on the media and one of the most widely known academics in Japan. At the intersection of academia, industry, media, and policy, his work won several prizes, including The Prime Minister Prize, the Japanese government’s Open Innovation Award, MIT Technology Review’s Innovators under 35 Japan, KDDI Contribution Award, among others. He obtained a Ph.D. from MIT and a bachelor from the University of Tokyo (with the best undergraduate thesis award given to an outstanding thesis once every few years). He was previously a Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford University, Visiting Associate Professor at Hitotsubashi University, and currently hold research affiliate positions at MIT, University of Chicago, University of Tokyo, among others.

Tomomi Nishimoto is the current Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the IlluminArt Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Royal Chamber Orchestra. She also serves as Visiting Professor at Osaka College of Music. Nishimoto has been designated the first Honorary Ambassador for the city of Hirado and the first International Cultural Ambassador for Osaka. She is the first non-Russian to hold conductorial posts with the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia and the Mussorgsky State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, and she has been invited as a conductor to approximately thirty countries around the world. Beginning in 2013, Nishimoto has been invited on a yearly basis to the Vatican Music Festival. The following year, she received the Honor of Fondazione Pro Musica e Arte Sacra in Vatican, making her the youngest recipient ever of the award. In 2015, she appeared as a Japanese national active on a global basis in television commercials by the Japanese government that promoted Japan overseas for the G7 Summit.

Kohei Nishiyama is a serial entrepreneur and investor in the IT field and a pioneer in crowdfunding, setting up the world' s first prototype in 1997. He is a co-founder of ELEPHANT DESIGN HOLDINGS ltd., a venture investment company focusing on online platform technologies, and founder of CUUSOO SYSTEM co., ltd, an online open innovation platform that aggregates distributed intellectual resources. Kohei's strong interests in innovation, new technology, design and robotics coupled with "thinking-outside-the-box" attitude have lead him to become an expert in the fields of innovation management, new product development and design management. One of his projects, LEGO CUUSOO, a crowdsourcing/crowdfunding site jointly operated with LEGO SYSTEM SA., had its exit to LEGO and is now operated by its official service, LEGO IDEAS. At present, Kohei is applying his knowledge to emerging technologies by building an open innovation platform in the electricity industry.
Prior to ELEPHANT DESIGN HOLDINGS, he was a consultant at McKinsey & Company where he primarily handled new product development projects. Kohei holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Tokyo and continues his postdoc research at Copenhagen Business School.
Kohei grew up in South America until 19 and is fluent in Japanese, Spanish, and English.