Monthly Meeting

By Jackie Steele, FEW Co-Programs Director On June 20 we were delighted to welcome Cynthia Usui, author of 専業主婦が就職するまでにやっておくべき8つのこと (Eight things Full-Time Housewives Should Do Before Entering the Workforce) and Head of Hospitality, Tokyo 2020 Olympics, The Coca-Cola Company, as our guest speaker at the June Monthly meeting entitled, “Breaking the Mold: Finding New Beginnings…

Who knew that our members had so many hidden talents? The first joint event with FEW and FAJ — the group for French-speaking professional women in Tokyo — on May 15 unveiled quite few surprises as we listened to presentations about their work, projects, lives, experiences and aspirations. Members of both associations are involved in…

At FEW’s monthly meeting in April, we heard from two dynamic women working in law in Tokyo: Naoko Matsuzaki, Director, International Anti-Corruption and Global Intelligence for PwC Japan’s Forensic Services Group, and Catherine O’Connell, Founder and Principal of Catherine O’Connell Law and the first foreign female to set up as a sole legal practitioner in…

In honor of International Women’s month and the 7th anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake, we welcomed Megumi Ishimoto, Executive Director of NPO Women’s Eye, and Dr. Jackie F. Steele, a political scientist at the University of Tokyo, to share the stories and challenges of the amazing women change agents in post-disaster Tohoku. Neither…

You never know where life is going to take you. That was the message from our February guest speaker, Maxine Van-Cliffe Arakawa, who has had a decades-long career as a fashion stylist, make-up artist, and fashion show director in New York and Japan. She shared her personal experiences dealing with bi-polar disorder and gave her candid advice to…

Maud Janssen always has had a passion for clothes, shoes, accessories & make up, and making others beautiful. When she moved to Italy in 1999 she thought she had style, but then she started rubbing shoulders with Italian women, and felt like a farmer’s wife. She started to consider the question of how some women,…

When Emi Takemura graduated, the internet pretty much didn’t exist, and in her first job there was only one computer, and one email address. So how have we gone from there, to the current situation of more and more powerful computers and an explosion in connectivity? That’s the question the Emi gave FEW members and…

Japan has been dealing with an influx of foreigners in the past few years, with overseas residents here reaching 2.38 million in 2016. But how has it been coping with that, and how do foreigners fit into broader government policies for a multicultural Japan? That was the issue debated by the four panelists at FEW’s…