Yasuko Todo

Yasuko Todo enrolled to System Design and Management in September 2008 and graduated in 2010 and now holds a Master of System Engineering. She graduated from Ichigao High School, Kanagawa and earned B.A. in English Literature from Ferris University.
Currently she is working for Wiley-Blackwell and involved in academic journal publishing business. While she was attending SDM she was working for British Columbia Trade and Investment Office - Japan as Project Coordinator,responsible for conducting research on Clean Energy Technology. Previously she worked for ITOCHU Corporation, one of the most prestigious trading companies in Japan. She was in charge of finance, international trading, logistics, and other areas there. Her subject of the master dissertation was "Quantitative Analysis of Middle and Long Term Energy Security in East Asia Region"

Potential and Creativity

What appeals to her about SDM is its "potential" and "creativity." Before she enrolled in SDM, she worked at a Japanese trading company that did business globally. Her work experience is varied; from currency trading to international trade and domestic logistics. Even before she joined the trading company, she wanted to be involved in a business in which she could represent her own country as a leader and work as a bridge between Japan and the rest of the world. She kept this ambition since then.  There are, however, very few chances for a woman to exercise leadership in the male-dominated world of a trading company. She was struggling to find a way to further my career, when she learned about SDM. 

When she enrolled, SDM had just been founded and was full of ambition and energy to establish a system to develop international leaders.  Its possibility was unlimited. Seventy percent of the students had work experience, and the rest were new university graduates, She was surprised to find that our classroom was a place for people with various backgrounds to discuss and find new values.  SDM is not just a graduate school for science, but a place to create new ideas beyond traditional discipline boundaries. Students don't just study books. SDM has many interactive and project-based programs stressing the importance of human communications, and through those educational programs, students have opportunities to acquire the skills they need in international society. The SDM programs are continuously developing. Since last year, student exchange programs are available through cooperation with foreign universities. Students also have programs related company management, and courses given by international lecturers. If you are motivated, you can try what you have learned in SDM in practical ways while you study abroad. SDM provides all kinds of possibilities.

Team Management

Among those opportunities to study abroad, she had an extraordinary experience through the Renault program and found it to be very memorable. This program gives students opportunity to learn about corporate culture, organizational, cultural differences, by conducting a research on a subject given by Renault-Nissan executive as a team formed by 3. The research will take part in two countries, 1 month in Renault/France starting to define what is the problem on the given subject and then 3 months in Nissan/Japan to search into depth which is the dynamic part of this program. During the whole research process students will have full support from both Renault and Nissan in order to collect enough information which students need for the research.

After she finished one semester, she heard about the "Multicultural Management and Corporate Performance" from her supervisor and with his strong recommendation she decided to apply for the participation. Participating in the Renault program was a very good experience for herself because in this program she had a chance to have the insight of the world leading automotive manufacturer and not only that she had an opportunity to experience in multicultural work environment in reality which I was hoping for a very long time. She was very amazed and appreciates for all the support she had during the research.

In addition to that the most interesting and the important part of the Renault program is that students will be able to learn not only about the "corporate culture" but also about the "team management" which she believes that this is the key factor to bring the success to this program. The team itself is "multi-cultural" so all students really have to concentrate to keep on working together as a "team" who has different opinions and different point of views. Since their given subject was related to domestic marketing, team members put lots of effort on "translating" and help each other "understand" clearly during the research. They have done many interviews in local areas and there they had to face language barriers which they didn't expect that much. Nevertheless, within their team management they have overcome this barrier and brought an interesting result.