Mr. Degawa is president of CFA Society Japan. Mr. Degawa was the President and Representative Director of BlackRock Japan from 2010 until 2015. Prior to this assignment, Mr. Degawa worked for Societe Generale Asset Management Japan (currently Amundi Japan) as CEO and CIO for 8 years from 2002. Mr. Degawa started his career as an equity analyst at Morgan Stanley Japan in 1985. He subsequently worked for JP Morgan Investment Management in London as a senior fund manager from 1993. Currently, Mr. Degawa acts as a country representative for Affiliated Managers Group (NYSE: AMG). Mr. Degawa also is a consultant for Yarra Capital Management based in Melbourne and Nordea Asset Management in Luxemburg. Mr. Degawa is a Non-Executive Board member for Yarra Capital Management and Gong-Cha Japan. Mr. Degawa is also a board member of the United World College Japan National Committee. Mr. Degawa received BA and MA in Engineering Science and Economics from University of Oxford.

Akimi Matsuda, CFA 

Akimi Matsuda, Ph.D, CFA, leads CFA Society Japan along with President and Secretary. She assumed her role in November 2020 and has more than 15 years of investment professional experience. Before the current role, she was leading University Liaison Committee (Research Challenge) at the Society and served as a “CFA ambassador “ or liaison between PIMCO Japan Ltd (a corporate sponsor since 2018) and CFA Society Japan. Ms. Matsuda is a senior vice president and credit analyst at PIMCO Japan Ltd. Previously, she served as a strategist and account manager focused on Asia (particularly Japan) products and institutional client servicing. Prior to joining PIMCO in 2013, she was a vice president in the structured products department within the global capital markets group at Nomura Securities Co., where she worked in solution sales. Previously, she was a senior associate and quantitative strategist in fixed income research at Lehman Brothers. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from New York University. She received an undergraduate degree from Sophia University. She earned her CFA charter in 2017.

Fumihiko Imamura, CFA

Fumihiko Imamura, CFA joined CFA Japan Society's board of directors in November 2020. His contribution to the society began as a volunteer member for JIC 2020 working group, where he later joined the administrative team as a director and is a treasurer now. He has been engaged in financial market operation for the past 15 years with a highly successful track record in a wide range of IT project management and bilingual relationship management at Tokyo Stock Exchange and Osaka Exchange. Mr. Imamura holds an MBA from IESE Business School and an MA and BA in economics from Chiba University. He is an active rugby player in a local league.

Shuntaro Tsukamoto, CFA

Shuntaro Tsukamoto, CFA, is a freelance financial economic education professional to deliver insights on financial literacy and asset building through SNSs and lectures.  Previously he was a deputy director at Financial Services Agency, Government of Japan. He was responsible for financial and economic education for students and adults. He also conducts promotional activities for monthly installment type NISA, a tax-exempt investment scheme. Prior to that, Mr. Tsukamoto was the head of Product Management at Vanguard Investments Japan. He was in charge of the client/media engagements and spoke at both institutional and retail conferences on a wide range of investment related topics. Previously, Mr. Tsukamoto held various investment and relationship management roles at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, BlackRock, and UBS Asset Management. He is a member of CFA Japan Society and a graduate of Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Directors

Chunmei Huang, CFA

Chunmei Huang, CFA, Managing Director of Shinsei Corporate Investment Limited, Representative Director of Shinsei Impact Investment Limited in Shinsei Bank Group．Since joined Shinsei Bank in 2005, Ms. Huang has consistently engaged in principal investment and built private equity investment career. Ms. Huang has also performed as a member of multiple funds’ investment committee, board director and/or corporate supervisor for portfolio companies and funds’ general partner. Ms. Huang setup the impact team in 2017, currently managing 2 impact investment funds, “Childcare Support Fund” and “HATARAKU (WORK) Fund” as investment committee member.　The “Childcare Support Fund” was the first impact investment fund for Japanese bank group. Ms. Huang is also the board director member of JihSun Financial Holding Co., Ltd (Listed on Taiwan Stock Exchange), member of Japan National Advisory Board of GSG, visiting researcher of Center for Social Investment, Tama University, Member of “SDGs measurement model review committee” of Kanagawa prefecture, Japan etc. Ms. Huang received B.A. in Finance from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and MBA from Kobe University. She is also a CFA Charter holder and AICPA of Delaware, USA.　Ms. Huang has been awarded as “Woman of the Year 2019” by Nikkei Woman.

Zuhair Khan, CFA

Senior Portfolio Manager, UBP Investments Co. Ltd. Zuhair manages a governance-focused, market-neutral, Japanese equity long-short strategy at UBP. Prior to joining UBP, he had been the Head of Research and Japan Strategist at Jefferies; where his research focused on corporate governance reform, shareholder activism and event driven strategies. Zuhair has 25 years of experience at global financial institutions, including UBS, Citigroup and MUFG. He has an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT and graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania with dual degrees from the School of Engineering and the Wharton School.

Akira Okada, CFA

Akira Okada has been working for Manulife since 2004, most recently as a Chief Investment Officer for Manulife Japan General Account since 2013 after having taken various senior roles at Manulife Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. Prior to joining Manulife, he was a head of fixed income at Fukoku Capital Management, with managing pension money between 1999 and 2004. He started his investment career at Long Term Credit Bank of Japan as a proprietary dealer of various products, like fx, money market and derivatives in Hong Kong, New York and London since 1988. He holds bachelor degree of Law and MBA from Hitotsubashi University in Japan. He has been mentor for Research Challenge since 2018 and a member of Advocacy committee of CFA Japan Society since 2018.

Yasuko Sato, CFA

Yasuko Sato is Director and Client Portfolio Manager specialised in Japanese equity at Invesco Asset Management Japan, with nearly 20-year experience in the asset management industry. Yasuko previously spent nine years in London in a similar role at Asset Management One and JPMorgan Asset Management. Before being seconded to London, she worked as a research analyst covering the transportation sector for six years at JPMorgan Asset Management in Tokyo. She holds a B.A. in Literature from Waseda University and an M.A. in International Management (Hons) from Thunderbird School of Global Management. She has the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.

Statutory Auditors

Makoto Hatta, CFA

Shuichi Seo is CEO of Business Japan Inc. and has been engaged in research based advisory services on capital and operational tie-ups for Japanese and foreign companies since 2017.  He started his career with Nomura Research Institute in 1984 and was engaged in research and consulting in Tokyo, Sydney and London for 16 years.  Then he conducted fund research with Mitsubishi Asset Brains till 2004, helped forming marketing strategy for Nikko Asset Management till 2007, advised corporate clients on M&A and corporate finance with IBS Securities till 2011, led institutional business with T&D Asset Management till 2016 and served FRONTEO Inc. as CFO till 2017.