Caroline Kennedy was the first woman to serve as United States Ambassador to Japan. Her tenure from November 2013 to January 2017 was marked by the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and the historic visits of President Obama to Hiroshima and Prime Minister Abe to Pearl Harbor. As Ambassador, Kennedy supported the economic empowerment of women and worked to increase student exchange between the United States and Japan. She strengthened cultural ties between countries through the International Poetry Exchange Project (IPEP), a program she co-founded that brought together high school students from New York City, Japan, and South Korea with the goal of promoting cross-cultural dialogue through the exchange of poetry. Kennedy is an attorney and the author/editor of eleven books on such subjects as law, civics, and poetry. From 2002 to 2013, Kennedy played a leading role in New York City school reform efforts, heading the Office of Strategic Partnerships and serving as Vice Chairwoman of the Fund for Public Schools, transforming the Fund into a system-wide vehicle for private support of public school reform, and helping to create the first K-12 arts curriculum funded by the private sector. Kennedy serves as Honorary President of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and is Co-Chair of the Senior Advisory Committee of the Harvard Institute of Politics. She is also a Director of the Boeing Company and a Trustee of the Asia Society.

Bernise Ang is Principal at Zeroth Labs, a systems innovation lab which helps cities in developing countries make sense of urbanization challenges and prototype new public services to meet them. She had a previous corporate life in private equity and in M&A, and also founded Syinc, a youth development nonprofit, from which alums have gone on to become Forbes 30 Under 30 and Ashoka Fellows awardees. In international policy, she co-created processes for the development of civil society policy positions at the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat. Ms. Ang is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and adjunct faculty at the Singapore Management University on innovation methods.

Arnel Paciano Casanova is an expert in the fields of property law, urban planning and real estate and public finance; rising from the ranks to become the youngest President and Chief Executive Officer of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority. He was active in anti-corruption work and led the recovery of government lands now worth US$ 2 billion misappropriated by retired generals. He testified before the Feliciano Commission on the issue of military corruption as one of the causes of military mutiny in 2003. Aside from the wealth of his experience, Mr. Casanova teaches at the University of the Philippines College of Law and earned his Master of Public Administration in Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government as a Mason Fellow. He describes himself as a slum dweller who became a city-builder.

Kanae Doi is the Japan Director for Human Rights Watch. After passing Japan’s National Bar Examination in 1996 while still a student at the University of Tokyo, Ms. Doi went on to work as an attorney in Japan from 2000 to 2016, during which she championed the cause of refugees and urged revisions to the Refugee Recognition Act. She earned a master’s degree in International Studies from the New York University School of Law in 2006 and then passed the New York State Bar Examination in 2007. She assumed her current position at Human Rights Watch in September 2008.

Eugene Yi is co-founder and President of Cortico, a nonprofit rooted in the Laboratory for Social Machines within the MIT Media Lab that aims to foster a healthy public sphere. He led the product team for the Electome project at the MIT Media Lab that used machine learning analytics to track the horserace of ideas in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Previously, he was the Head of Asia Public Policy for Twitter and helped develop the company’s hyperlocal and global corporate social responsibility mission. Prior to joining Twitter, Mr. Yi worked for the U.S. Department of State at the embassy in Beijing as a Political Officer covering Internet freedom. He was an East Asia strategist and a Country Director for China and Korea in the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Department of Defense. He received his B.Ａ. and MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.

Shinjiro Koizumi was born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1981 and after graduating from the College of Economics, Kanto Gakuin University, he went on to obtain an MA from the Graduate School of Arts and Science, Columbia University, in 2006. After working as a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), he changed careers to become a secretary to former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in 2007. In August 2009, he was elected to the House of Representatives, and is now serving his fourth term. In September 2013, he became Parliamentary Vice-Minister of the Cabinet Office and Parliamentary Vice-Minister of the Reconstruction Agency. In October 2015, he became the Director, Agriculture and Forestry Division, LDP, and was involved in agricultural reform. Since August 2017, he has been Chief Deputy Secretary-General.

As president and CEO, Josette Sheeran is responsible for advancing the Asia Society’s global work in the fields of arts and culture, policy and business, and education. She also serves as a UN Special Envoy to Haiti. Ms. Sheeran is former vice chair of the World Economic Forum. She also led the World Food Programme (WFP) as executive director. Prior to this, she served as a diplomat and negotiator for the United States, including as U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs. In 2011, Forbes named her the world’s 30th most powerful woman and Huffington Post recognized her as a “Game Changer.”