MANAGEMENT BIO
YUMKO KUSAKABE, CEO
INSEAD Global Executive MBA
Yumiko Kusakabe has over 19 years of international banking experience and 17 years focused experience in emerging markets’ development finance. She has experience working with international organizations, international projects, as well as Japanese companies. She has worked at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington DC for 15 years, where she led large-scale international financial transactions and financial policy development for IDB. In 2015, she was responsible for developing the India-Japan Infrastructure Partnership initiative for a Japanese company as Chief Operating Officer and developed partnership with Indian companies.
During her tenor in the IDB, she successfully originated, structured, negotiated and closed varied innovative international structured finance transactions with project cost sizes of $50milion - $500million. She has worked with over 10 countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region and advised governments and leading companies on their strategies to mobilize international investors. In addition to Latin American region, she has extensive experience and business network with India.
For innovative and developmental structuring and project execution, she won the Ortiz Mena Award (October 2006), and Outstanding Team Award (October 2007) from the IDB President. Prior to IDB, she was at the Goldman Sachs Investment Banking division and worked on the initial Public Offering team of NTT Docomo Communications ($39 billion).
She is the Fellow of US-Japan Leadership program, Japan-China Leadership Program and holds a Global Executive MBA from INSEAD (France, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi), Masters of Economics from University of Tokyo, and Bachelor of Science in Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
She is currently Director for International Business Development for Tokai Tokyo Financial Holdings, Program Director for Innovation Leaders Program at the International Foundation for Information Technology, Advisor for Dentsu Corporation for new business ideation and planning such as its Smart Cell & Design lab. She is also actively involved in India- Japan business leadership initiatives. She is the author of weekly report series "Innovation Frontier" for Tokai Tokyo Financial Holdings, and introduces the latest trends and outlook of cutting-edge technologies and concepts that relate to industry applications of future technology and innovation perspectives, such as AI, genomics, big data, robotics and IoT etc.
