Kenichi Hosoda is a 4th-term Member of the House of Representatives and Chairman of the Committee on Organisations involved with Land Development Construction at the Party Organisations and Campaign Headquarters at the Liberal Democratic Party. His constituency is Niigata 2nd Ward.

Prior to the current position, he served as State Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry from October 2021 to August 2022, and several senior posts within the LDP including Deputy Chief Secretary, Research Commission on Comprehensive Energy Strategy, and Director, Agriculture and Forestry Division. He has also served on the Special Committee for the Investigation of Nuclear Power Issues at the House.

Before seeking public office, Hosoda joined the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (currently METI) after graduating from Faculty of Law, Kyoto University in 1988. During his 18 years of bureaucratic career, he served at Minister’s Secretariat, Living Industry Bureau, and Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, and was seconded to the Embassy of Japan in Spain in 1997-1999.

He earned a Master’s degree in Public Administration from John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University in 2003.

With deep knowledge and expertise in change management, business improvement, project management and sales within a number of industries, such as Renewables, Oil and Gas, Fossil Power Generation, Transmission and Distribution and Mining, Russell was appointed as Japan country manager of Siemens Gamesa in November 2019. Since then, he is engaged with business expansion of Siemens Gamesa in Japan market.

In the business environment that organizations are constantly evolving, Russell has been successful as a senior executive by leading to embrace change and improvement under his strong leadership and achieving growth in the difficult environment for large complex multinationals. He has over 20 years of experience in fields such as Wind Power and Renewables, Power and Gas and Heavy Industries Machinery, mainly in the Australian and Japanese markets.

Before joining Siemens Gamesa, he served as Integration Project Manager Japan and Group Process Improvement Manager at Daifuku BCS; Various roles with Siemens Australia including Energy Sales Director and Business Improvement Manager; Machinery & Industrial Division Manager in Australia & New Zealand for Mitsubishi Corporation; and Procurement Officer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Hiroshima.

Vivian Tokai is the North Asia Director of the Economist Intelligence Corporate Network based in Tokyo and covering Japan and South Korea. She is responsible for programme development and client engagement. She works closely with c-level executives on key economic and political issues and industry-specific analysis to support their businesses in the region.

Vivian is a government affairs and public policy professional with 25 years of experience covering a wide variety of sectors, including energy, environment, aviation, transportation, defense, IT and digital economy. She has extensive senior leadership experience with a wide range of blue-chip multinational businesses in Japan. Prior to joining the Economist Group, she led Japan government relations activities at UPS, GE, Facebook, eBay and Honeywell. She was responsible for developing and executing strategic lobbying approaches, and ensuring strong relationships with regulators and government leaders.

Vivian has been active in a number of business organisations. She is a member of the Keizai Doyukai, Japan Association of Corporate Executives, and has held various board roles with the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan. She has also been a visiting professor and lecturer at a number of Japanese universities including Chuo University and Showa Women’s University.

Her personal commitment is female empowerment. She served as Chief Diversity Officer at Citigroup in Japan and was selected as Women’s Leadership member at GE.

Vivian also possesses extensive experience in the media. She anchored a sports news segment of a daily evening news program at NHK, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation. She earned a Master of Science degree in Broadcast Journalism from School of Journalism, College of Communication, Boston University. She can speak Japanese and English, and introductory Chinese, Korean and French.