Wakaba Takemura: My "Connecting the Dots" That Began at SFC

2021/04/23

Since the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies does not have strict majors, I took advantage of that and enrolled in a wide range of classes. While taking aesthetics and art history classes at the Faculty of Letters in Mita, I also took classes on French, sociology, and technology at SFC.

Looking back, I was unconsciously anxious at the time about needing to become someone important and needing to gain expertise for that purpose. There was a part of me that felt despair, thinking I would never become anyone because the results of following my interests were so incoherent.

After graduating from university, I studied in France for a year on a Renault Foundation scholarship to earn an MBA, and then joined a PR firm. While supporting the domestic expansion of global social media there, I witnessed the dynamism of how the internet and new forms of media were changing society and the way people exist and perceive things.

Driven by a desire to see this wave of transformation even more closely, my clients naturally centered around technology and the internet when I became a freelance PR professional after leaving the agency. Among them was Change.org, where I currently serve as the Country Director for Japan.

When I became a full-fledged team member, it was still a very small team of two or three people. Results wouldn't be achieved unless I took the stance of doing whatever was necessary, even if it was something I didn't know. The slogan "Done is better than perfect" is often cited in the Silicon Valley startup movement, and working in exactly that kind of atmosphere suited my characteristics.

What was supposed to start as support for public relations activities eventually expanded to include managing email newsletters for users, setting and executing monetization strategies, and even supporting social change activities using Change.org. Before I knew it, I, who had been a humble PR marketer, became a specialist in supporting activists.

Now, my main duties are recruitment, team management, and strategy setting for a team that has grown to nine people. However, my goal in team management is driven by an awareness of the challenge of how to use the internet and technology to encourage activism and deepen the social participation of individual citizens in Japanese democracy.

I now feel that my seemingly disjointed experiences at SFC were extremely helpful in gaining breadth as a generalist and insight into society.