USJC Women + Forum: Demystifying Leadership Coaching: A U.S.-Japan Cross-Cultural Perspective

Chiyo Okita is an experienced Talent Acquisition (TA) leader, providing vision, strategies, planning, and execution of recruiting initiatives by partnering with management teams to meet business needs and goals.

She was most recently at Amazon as the Head of Japan, Executive Recruiting, focusing on the most senior level hiring. Previously, she led the TA team for Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies in Japan, building a sustainable team to hire all levels and roles for the organization. She started her in-house recruiting career at Pfizer Japan, where she contributed in converting a local team to a global organization.

Chiyo acquired her passion for TA at Spencer Stuart, a global executive search firm, both in Japan as well as in Silicon Valley. Also, through her team management experiences, she developed herself to become empathic people manager, to solve talent needs under complex, conflicting, and ambiguous environments.

Before embarking into her professional career, she lived in Singapore, Japan, and U.S., and earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology from Hitotsubashi University in Japan. She currently lives in Tokyo with her husband and 16-year-old son.

Yasuko is an independent Organizational Development Consultant, Facilitator, and  Executive/Business Coach with 18 years of experience serving international corporations.  She has also conducted 200+ workshops in international business setting and has  coached 150+ international (Japanese, American, Chinese, Indian etc.) executives and  business managers on 1on1 basis. Her specialties lie in leadership development, team  management skills development, organizational culture change, and diversity  management.

Besides her independent work as a Consultant/Coach, Yasuko has been successful in  starting up OD/training service operations as a business consultant as well. Since 2020,  she in contracted with Syneos Health with the mission to start their “Learning Solutions”  operation in Japan. She played a crucial role in building not only the content of client  service but also building the business itself through creating business processes, training  team members, and developing business directly with clients. The team founded by  Yasuko and one Syneos manager in 2020 has developed its business during 3 years of  COVID and has grown into a full team. By 2023, it has delivered multiple  OD/Capability/Leadership development services to more than 10 global pharmaceutical  companies. 

Between 2016-2020, she was the “Capability Development Director for Japan” for Tardis  Medical (current Amplity Health) and lead the start-up of the training services for the  Medical Affairs functionality of global pharmaceutical companies.  

Prior to becoming independent, Yasuko has worked with one of the largest coaching  companies in the world, COACH A, co., ltd, for 6 years. While working as an  executive/business coach, she has also contributed to develop COACH A’s business  boundaries. One of her achievements was to launch the medical service section of the  business where she arranged to develop a medical coaching curriculum with medical  school professors (MD PhDs). She also contributed to create services for COACH A’s  subsidiary, Coaching Research Institute, LLP, as an organizational behavior researcher. 

Prior to joining COACH A, Yasuko was a Manager at ABeam Consulting Ltd. (Former  Deloitte Tohmatsu Consulting) and provided business/IT consulting and project  management services as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) specialist. As a  Manager, she has managed international teams to support large scale BPR and IT  development projects for major international client companies. 

For over twenty-five years Wendy has coached emerging and experienced leaders through a process of self-discovery, goal setting and accountability by creating a safe and challenging environment for learning. Leveraging her education (M.A., Organizational Communication & Development, Purdue University), and prior experience as an Organizational Development and Human Resources Executive, Wendy brings unique perspective to clients who are committed to learning the skills and practices needed to build relationships, engage and align teams, and promote a healthy culture as the foundation for achieving results and leading transformational change in organizations. 

Wendy specializes in coaching leaders who are preparing for the next level of leadership by guiding them to identify success factors for new roles, discover learning opportunities, and focus on key relationships.  Wendy effectively adapts her approach to serve clients from small and large organizations, and from a wide variety of professions and industries.  Consistent with her personal mission, she values partnering with leaders and organizations which are working to improve the lives of people in their communities.