Takashi Kawamoto, 2011 MGS alumni, is a Director at Brunswick Group, a London-based premium advisory firm focusing on cross-border critical business issues. He is based in Washington, D.C., and leads the firm’s U.S.-Japan business practice; advising on cross-border mergers and acquisitions, activist defense, crisis management (litigation, cyber data breach, corruption, workplace conduct, etc), and public/government affairs.
Takashi has evolved through successful careers in both the public and private sector, but everything started with his first op-ed article in the China Daily he coauthored with Dr. Dennis Hickey in his first semester of graduate study.
After graduation, he went back home to serve as a diplomatic official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan in Tokyo and as researcher/advisor at the Consulate General of Japan in Honolulu. He then developed his problem-solving skills in management consulting with Deloitte Consulting as Senior Consultant, where he was awarded as Best Consultant of the year out of 2,000 fellow consultants. This work led to a stint at the World Economic Forum Japan office as strategy consultant.
He subsequently passed a highly competitive national exam and was nominated for the Junior Professional Officer (JPO) program to work for the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), Regional Office for Europe in Brussels, where he primarily focused on private sector partnership with EU institutions and corporations.
With the multi-sectorial experiences, he joined Brunswick Group in 2018 as one of the founding members of the Tokyo office and, following that successful opening, he relocated to the United States with his wife, Emiko (also a MSU alumni), and daughter, Emma, in 2020 to lead the firm’s U.S.-Japan business.
Takashi has served as a policy advisor to the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan and the Government of Japan, as well as being appointed as Senior Researcher at Keio University Institute at SFC.
He holds a BA in intercultural communication from Hosei University, Master of Global Studies from Missouri States University and later studied at University of Cambridge, Judge Business School.