New Jersey, USA
An experienced leadership/executive coach, cross-cultural consultant and trainer, Michiko has worked extensively with Japanese/Asian and American executives. She is a Japanese native with work experience in multinational corporations across sales, business development planning, research and human resources. Her areas of cultural expertise include Japan, China and the United States.
As a 2023 graduate of Georgetown University’s Executive Certificate in Leadership Coaching program, Michiko brings a broad set of tools and skills. She works to increase executives/managers’ presence in global business or any place where they want to be effective.
She started coaching in the late 2000s. As her coaching work increased, the coaching conversations shifted from cross-cultural to leadership topics. She partners with the coachees and helps them create their own vision, define their identity/values, and find their best version in business and life.
Michiko has also been a cross-cultural trainer and consultant since 1998. She has trained groups of American and Japanese managers and employees on how to work productively with their colleagues, employees and clients. She has a broad base of experience working with major American and Japanese organizations.
Also an author, her bilingual book “Heart to Heart English” was published by IBC Publishing, Japan in 2020.
Michiko received her undergraduate degree at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, majoring in Chinese. She holds a M.B.A. from Aoyama Gakuin, where she studied intercultural communication and wrote her thesis on how to globalize Japanese corporations.
Early in her career in Tokyo, Michiko worked in sales at a trading company where she sold Hitachi parts and kits to China. She was then an international planning analyst at Toppan Moore Systems, conducting a feasibility study for a joint venture with a Chinese company and organizing projects to network overseas subsidiaries.
After moving to live in the U.S. in 1992, she worked at Itochu International Inc. as a Human Resources Coordinator, facilitating communication between New York and the Tokyo head office. She also worked for the Japanese Business Unit of DRT (now Deloitte & Touche LLP).
