The Feb. 2021 Online "Global Career Mind" Program concluded its first series of lectures and workshops with University of California Berkeley Professor Brett Yokom and panel of guest speaker alumni (profiles featured below).

 

The day began with a welcome session in which the students were able to get reacquainted (some had been previously unable to attend orientation meetings), undergo a refresher on the program content and goals, and were given an introduction to the history and demographic breakdown of Silicon Valley. 

 

The afternoon provided a panel of guest speakers, Japanese national alumni from UCB who now live and work in Silicon Valley. Kansai University students were given the opportunity to ask questions relating to international business, living and working abroad, and benefitted from the wisdom of their senpai. 

 

One student commented on the days events, saying "It was a really good meaningful time for me."

 

Another noted that although the program content was challenging, "I could have a productive day."

 

The students will reconvene for Day 2 of the program tomorrow. 

 

 

 

GUEST SPEAKER PROFILES

 

Chiyuki Matsuda - Investor Relations, Pegasus Tech Ventures
Chiyuki Matsuda is an alumni of the International Diploma Program at UC Berkeley in 2020, and currently working at a Silicon Valley based Venture Capital firm as an Investor Relations Manager, where her main mission is to handle the communication loop with the fund investors. She started her career at an IT company called DeNA in Japan where her
role varied from developing a new service to an in-house security manager. She grew up in Japan and some international study experiences at UC Irvine during her college time as well as at UC Berkeley. 

 

Kazuki Nakayashiki - Product Manager & Software Engineer, A Stealth Mode Startup
Kazuki Nakayashiki is a Japanese entrepreneur with 3+ years of experience of product and project management across his own startup and other startups. Kazuki’s former startup wasaccepted to Berkeley SkyDeck in Fall 2019. Kazuki is also a member of Xoogler (ex-Googler) community and was a former Asana Ambassador. Kazuki graduated from The University of Tokyo in 2016 with a Master’s Degree in Chemistry and Biotechnology. Kazuki earned a professional certificate in Project Management at UC Berkeley Extension in 2018. While in program, Kazuki received an award for Global Business and Marketing Strategy Game. In his free time, Kazuki likes to read books, hike, and explore new coffee shops.

 

Emiko Yoshii - former Strategic Account Manager, Salesforce *currently working for Siemens 
Emiko has 15+ years of professional sales experience in American high-tech companies. While at Salesforce Emiko achieved one of the largest Japanese insurance account quota by building an effective account team and closed the biggest deal Salesforce.com Japan has ever had as the Account Executive. (ACV over $10M, TCV over $60M.). Emiko also trained and mentored junior-level sales representatives by exposing them to C-level account interaction, modeling sales closing techniques and communication skills in customer languages to maximize revenue, operational efficiency, and process development.