Women in Japanese Business

Topics during the panel discussion included women in entrepreneurship, company management, and professional careers in Japan or with Japanese clients.  Recent trends and factors for success.

Panelists:

- Elizabeth Shoemaker, Attorney at Law, Law Offices of David Makman

- Shiho Watabe, Senior Director of Marketing, Mercari

- Ikuyo Yamada, CEO, Capella Systems

Elizabeth Shoemaker, Attorney at Law, Law Offices of David Makman

Elizabeth Shoemaker is a corporate attorney whose practice focuses on corporate transactions, intellectual property licensing and civil litigation. She has experience drafting and negotiating a broad range of corporate contracts. She is also experienced in assisting and advising clients throughout the entire process of forming a company, including the registration process, drafting the formation documents (for corporations and LLCs), negotiating commercial real estate space, obtaining executive visas, registering trademarks and hiring employees.

On the litigation side, Ms. Shoemaker has represented clients in contract, trademark, real estate, product safety, and employment matters. In 2011, she successfully argued a case before the 9th Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel and obtained a judgment for her client in a published opinion.

Prior to becoming an attorney, Ms. Shoemaker worked in the information technology field. She has lived in Japan for over 10 years and she reads and speaks Japanese.

Shiho Watabe, Senior Director of Marketing, Mercari

Shiho is a born and bred Tokyoite who has lived and worked around the world. She currently works in Silicon Valley as a Senior Director of Marketing for a Japanese unicorn that went public in June 2018. Prior to that Shiho was in Google for nearly a decade working in 40+ markets including Japan, Pan-Asia & Pacific, Europe, Africa and North America.  In a prior life, she was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in Tokyo. Shiho holds an MA from Stanford and a BA from International Christian University in Tokyo.

Shiho is a certified career coach and is honored to have helped incredible women from Google, the World Bank, and Stanford as well as serving as a career panelist for MBA students.  She received a major life promotion in 2016 - becoming a working parent of twins, with a spouse who works in Washington DC and Africa.

Ikuyo Yamada, CEO, Capella Systems

Ikuyo Yamada is founder and CEO of Capella Systems, a company that develops enterprise level software using the latest video compression technologies.  Her software enables a high quality live video events and delivers media contents efficiently by converting between different video formats. She was previously part of Rhozet corporation, offering universal video transcoder which was successfully acquired by Harmonic Inc. Ikuyo is passionate about working closely with engineering teams, and creating innovative, next generation products using the latest technologies.

Networking with light refreshments after the discussion.