Mitsuko Shimomura (下村満子) - President & CEO, Genki Plaza Medical Center for Healthcare
Shimomura is one of Japan's most distinguished journalists and President and CEO of Genki Plaza Medical Center for Healthcare and of Center for Health Care and Public Concern. She also serves as the only female vice chairman of Keizai Doyukai (Japan Association of Corporate Executives). Shimomura has been an active leader in the medical and healthcare fields. Genki Plaza is a spin-off of Center for Healthcare and Public Concern (Tokyo Kenbikyo-In) which was established in 1891. Genki Plaza took over the center’s healthcare services and performs health screenings at workplaces, schools, and local communities. It also offers comprehensive medical checkups, outpatient services, a diabetes center, mental and physical counseling and a gender specific medical center for women. Shimomura received the International Athena Award from the Partnership for Women’s Health at the Columbia University in 2002 for introducing gender-specific medicine to Japan.Shimomura graduated from Keio University in Economics, and received her master's degree in the same subject at New York University. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1987- 88.
In 1965, Shimomura started to work for Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading newspaper (daily circulation: 8 million), and went all over the world. Her two decades with Asahi Shimbun is a record of many "first woman"s in Japan: the first female foreign correspondent (Asahi Shimbun, New York, 1980), the first woman journalist to achieve Senior Staff Writer status, and the first woman Editor-in-Chief of a major national-circulation weekly magazine (Asahi Journal, 1990-92). She was the first woman to receive the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist prize for outstanding international reporting (1982). Shimomura left Asahi at the end of 1994, and continues her active career as an independent writer and journalist, TV commentator and public speaker.
In addition to her work as a journalist, Shimomura has written more than twenty books including, Harvard Memories: Reflections on Japan and the U.S.; The Truth behind Japan Bashing; American Views of Japan, and Made in Japan - Akio Morita and Sony, which was written in1986 in collaboration and subsequently published in 20 languages. Her latest book is Thank you to you: Meaning of Life.
Mitsuko Shimomura’s homepage: http://www.m-shimomura.com/english/