Fukagawa’s major interest lies in economic development in East Asia, especially Korea. She worked for Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) and Long-Term Credit Bank Research Institute (LTCBR) before joining the faculty member of Aoyama Gakuin University and the University of Tokyo. She was a visiting fellow at Cambridge University in 2014, and Yonsei University in 2015. She engaged in many consultation and advisory activities for the government. Recent publication includes “Beyond “Abenomics”: Japan’s integration catch-up and prospects for Japan-UK cooperation”, Chatham House, 2019.

Toru Nishiyama is the Managing Director of A.P. Moller-Maersk for North East Asia. He joined Maersk in 2002 and has held various positions in the company across the world, including in Thailand and China. Most recently, he was Director of Sales for North East Asia in Maersk Line AS and the Head & Japan Branch President for Maersk Line AS in North East Asia.

Mr Nishiyama graduated from Keio University's Faculty of Law.

Mr. Omoto presently leads next generation business development for Marubeni - one of the Japan’s trading and investment houses. Anticipating today’s rapid changes potentially having forces of disrupting half of Marubeni’s existing business over the long run, Marubeni has established next generation business development division in 2019 with a mission to create next generation businesses toward year 2030 targeting four global growth engines 1) next generation consumers in Asia, 2) social infrastructure, 3) healthcare, and 4) investments in frontier business models and start-ups.

Prior to Marubeni’s next generation business development, Mr. Omoto was the chief of Marubeni’s corporate strategy and planning team for years 2016-2018 and before 2016 was responsible for power/energy business development and international joint-venture management including his postings in Turkey, USA, UAE and the UK. In Mr. Omoto’s most recent international positing, he was Chief Operating Officer for the UK’s Smartestenergy that aggregates small renewable generators across the UK and to provides the UK businesses with locally procured renewable powers. Also, Mr. Omoto has experiences of leaving Marubeni to work for McKinsey & Company as a management consultant and then rejoining Marubeni from McKinsey.

Mr. Omoto holds MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School and B.A in commerce from Waseda University.

Kyohei Joined SAP Japan in 1998. He engaged as a software developer to launch a new ecommerce and SRM business (including Headquarter in Walldorf Germany and Labs in US Palo
Alto). After that, he was engaged in pre-sales and business development for SRM/Marketplace.

He joined Boston Consulting Group in 2005 as management consultant, working for various strategic cases such as Telecom companies' new product development strategy, mobile device
procurement strategies, financial institutions' overseas expansion strategies, corporate turnaround projects for pharmaceutical companies, long-term growth strategies for general construction, and due diligence on manufacturing M&A.

He moved Microsoft Japan in 2007 as Senior Manager of Business Planning & Operation for company-wide strategy, medium-term management plan, and budget formulation. After that, he became in Project Manager for the mid-tier enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises.
In 2009, he has been in charge of business development in Cloud Business (Office 365/Azure).
Since 2012, he had been engaged as Director of Partner Sales and Partner Strategy & Program.

In 2017, he rejoined SAP Japan, as Vice President for Business Strategy & Growth for implementation of SAP Japan's medium-term management plan. In 2018 He was Head of Industry Value Engineering, he has been working for his current position since 2019.

Kyohei holds BA and MBA from Keio University. He also studied at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth as exchange.

Dimitry Rakin is the Associate Director of the Economist Corporate Network North Asia, where he is responsible for events planning, private briefings, data analysis and research in Japan and South Korea. He is an expert on Japanese economy, business and trade as well as on the history and politics of the East Asia region.

Prior to joining The Economist Group, Dimitry was a Senior Officer of Economic Affairs in the Trade Delegation Unit of the Russian Embassy in Japan connecting Russian and Japanese companies, promoting Russia as an investment destination and facilitating Russia-Japan intergovernmental negotiations on economic cooperation. He started his career as an editor covering East Asia in one of the biggest Russian news agencies (ITAR-TASS) working in the central office and Tokyo Bureau of the agency.

Dimitry has an MA degree in Japanese language and history from the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) and was also a Japanese government (MEXT) research scholar at Meiji University’s Graduate School of Law, Tokyo. In addition to native Russian language skills, he is fluent in English and Japanese.