role: Strategic Advisors

Shuzo Otani is a transformational business leader in the engineering simulation and high-tech industries. As the Area Vice President for Aerospace & Defense at ANSYS, he has driven the launch and direction of the aerospace and defense vertical across the Asia-Pacific region.

Otani orchestrates strategies aligning with national defense agencies and government affiliates in key countries, forging partnerships with the region’s top aerospace and defense suppliers while coordinating large-scale direct sales and multi-country channel partner support. His expert approach brings customized ANSYS simulation solutions to important and complex defense procurements, making a significant contribution to ANSYS’s regional growth and the advancement of the Asia-Pacific’s aerospace sector.

Previously, as Area Vice President & Country Manager at ANSYS Japan. Under His guidance, the organization continued a strong path of business expansion and consistently met ambitious annual performance objectives. He substantially expanded the workforce while transforming and segmenting the direct sales structure to better align with target industries and specific customer groups. In addition, he oversaw enhancements to partner strategies and sales initiatives and guided a shift toward advanced contract models, which brought greater resilience and growth opportunities to the business.

Earlier in his career, he held prominent regional and national leadership roles at established global companies such as Autodesk and webMethods and led business intelligence expansion at IHS. He encompasses enterprise transformation, government relations, go-to-market strategy, advanced analytics, team development, and guiding international organizations through rapid and complex technological changes across aerospace, manufacturing, and beyond.

Dr. Tim Haffner is an International Relations Specialist with U.S. Forces Japan where he focuses on Alliance Transformation and Force Posture aimed at providing for the defense of Japan and the maintenance of regional security. He is a retired Air Force Reserve officer with his last assignment as a Political-Military Affairs Strategist with U.S. Forces Japan. He has been living in Japan since 2016 and enjoys training in Aikido and other samurai legacy martial arts.

Prior to moving to Japan, Dr. Haffner was a counternarcotics program analyst with U.S. Africa Command, providing law enforcement assistance to a variety of security forces in the North, West, and Central subregions. As an Air Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician, he supported ground combat operations in Iraq (2007) and Afghanistan (2008) and was awarded a Bronze Star and Combat Action Badge. Before joining the Air Force reserve in 2000, he served in the Army and National Guard Infantry units, from 1989 to 1999, specializing in small unit scout and sniper operations.

In his early civilian career, Dr. Haffner was a law enforcement officer at the municipal and county levels, a criminal investigator, an undercover drug agent, and SWAT team leader, in addition to serving with the U.S. Border Patrol in Arizona. He graduated from both the Southwest Florida Criminal Justice and U.S. Border Patrol academies with academic and firearms distinction awards and was also a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force Squadron Officer School.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice, a Master’s in Strategic Intelligence, and a Doctorate in Political Economy with a concentration in crisis cycles and scenario planning.

Ms. Tomoko Hoshino has extensive experience in international conferences and security-related engagements. She supported African ministers and delegates at TICAD V (2013) and TICAD VII (2019), assisting with diplomatic coordination and logistics.

At the African Development Bank Annual Meeting in 2019 (Malabo), she collaborated with AfDB officials, while in 2020 she observed the World Economic Forum in Davos, joining Financial Times-hosted sessions. She contributed to African security cooperation through the Ghana police project (2013) and participated in diplomatic briefings and courtesy visits to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.

As Horasis Global Vision Ambassador (2018–2019), she contributed to global economic dialogues, complementing her membership in the Africa Business Council (since 2019) and The Japan-India Association (2019–2021). Her work has consistently involved international delegations, government agencies, and national security.

Most recently, she initiated and coordinated the Ukraine-Japan Business Recovery Forum in February 2024, in partnership with Nikkei Newspaper and both countries’ Ministries of Foreign Affairs. The event at Nikkei Hall successfully brought 39 Ukrainian municipal leaders, including mayors, to Japan.

These are examples of Hoshino’s commitment to preserving peace through alliance building and a robust defense industry as a pillar of economic security. She is experienced producing and participating in private and intergovernmental meetings, organizing advanced dialogue on global stability and resilience.

Tetsuzo (Ted) Matsumoto has nearly 62 years of business carrier mainly in Information, Communication and Media business in Japan, US, and some other countries, and is still active in Japanese business community. Presently, he is serving as Chairman and CEO of ORNIS Corp. (Ocean Radar Network Information Services), Chairman and CEO of SAUFAL Inc. (Swarming Autonomous Underwater Fleet Architectural Laboratory) and Representative Director of HIQA, a non-profit organization for the Certification and Support of High IQ people.

In October 2006, Matsumoto joined Softbank Mobile Corp., as a member of the Board, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, according to the strong request of Masayoshi Son, Founder and Chairman of SoftBank Group. He served for the company for nearly 6 years, mainly responsible for the engineering strategy, government relations and international business development. During that period, the company recorded a dramatic growth.

Number of the mobile subscribers, which was 15.22 million (market share 16.5%) in March 2006, grew to 42.18 million (market share 29.8%) in March 2013, and EBIT, which was JPY 76.3 billion, grew to JPY 517.1 billion (6.8 times). During this period, he was also instrumental for the global cooperation of the mobile communication industry. He served as a member of the Board of GSMA (London) and GTI (Beijing) to play leading roles in these organizations for the technological innovation. Prior to joining the Softbank group, Matsumoto worked for Qualcomm for more than 10 years, commencing as a consultant, and, subsequently, serving as President and Chairman of Qualcomm Japan, which he established in March 1998, as well as Senior Vice President of its HQ in San Diego. During the time he served for Qualcomm, he was successful to change the political climate of Japanese mobile communication industry and make the system Qualcomm proposed one of the Japanese 3G standards.

Before that, Matsumoto worked for a Japanese conglomerate, Itochu Corporation for 34 years, occupying the positions such as Senior VP of Electronics Division of Itochu America, and General Manager of Telecommunication and Multimedia Business of its Tokyo HQ. Among many achievements he made during the time he served for Itochu, one of the remarkable was his contribution to the merger of the two competing satellite communication companies, which saved the industry from the serious over supply of the capacity, and the creation of the concept of the world’s first “Platform-based” Direct Satellite Broadcasting Service. Matsumoto received a Bachelor of Law degree from Kyoto University in 1962. In 2013 and 2014, he served as a Special Visiting Professor for Graduate School of Global Business at Meiji University.

Through his carrier, he wrote many books. In late 2017, he published a book titled “The Day AI becomes God” in Japanese and Korean. English version of the same book was published in 14 countries in the end of 2018, and the Chinese version was published by the Publishing Department of Tsinghua University in early 2019.

Anna Strumpel is Head of Business Development, Europe at a UK-based stealth defence tech, where she leads European market-entry, partnership development, and growth strategy. She advises leadership on European government engagement, offsets, and cooperation across key NATO markets.

Previously, Anna worked in International Business Development at Shield AI, based in the Abu Dhabi office, where she closed defence contracts across European Army, Navy, and Air Force customers. As the second hire on the European team, she helped establish and scale the company’s regional presence and credibility and led the first European sale of Shield’s AI autonomy software (Hivemind), supporting cross-border deployment and regulatory alignment.

Earlier, she supported strategic partnerships and international cooperation initiatives at Paladin Drones in the drones-as-first responders (DFR) sector.

She holds a BA in Human, Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge and is fluent in English and German.

David is CEO of Russell Communications, Inc., a bilingual specialist in global strategic communications who has lived in Japan for over 30 years. During that time, he has done communications work for the Japanese Government, the Bank of Japan, the Japan Olympics Committee, and many major corporations. He is a well-known author, with over a dozen published books to date, including KEIRETSU: Inside the Hidden Japanese Conglomerates (McGraw-Hill), voted “Best Business and Management Book of the Year” in the US, an award never given before to a book about Japan.

He also penned scores of magazine articles, including a landmark piece for the Harvard Business Review about Japanese manufacturing. In addition to book-writing, Mr. Russell helped to write speeches for both the Prime Minister and leading corporate CEOs, created advertising and marketing materials for commercial companies, and authored reams of PR and IR text for issues and circumstances.

David started his career at a major Japanese securities company, where he worked and studied for five years before moving on to the Nihon Keizai (Nikkei) business news group and later the Toyo Keizai group. While at the latter, he served as Editor of the Sumitomo Group’s global PR magazine. In 2000 he started his own firm, with a mission to help Japanese companies improve the quality and scope of their global communications.

Over the next two decades he helped develop communications strategies and materials for companies as diverse as Toyota, Sony, NTT, DoCoMo, Fast Retailing, Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, Dentsu, Canon, Nomura Holdings, Tokyo Gas, ORIX, Tokyo Electric Power, and others. He provided strategic communications services to the Cabinet Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, METI, Ministry of the Environment, and other organizations. In 2015 he was asked to serve as Director of Communications for Japan’s first global Cybersecurity Summit. A few years later he was sent to NY to host a government-sponsored event featuring then-prime minister Abe.

Much of the early corporate demand for his skills focused on Investor Relations, which he showed clients should be an integral part of a comprehensive global communications strategy. Long before Japanese companies were paying serious attention to social media, he gave an SRO presentation (in Japanese) to members of the Japan IR Association about the role of social media and proactive corporate messaging. Thereafter he addressed 130 members of the Osaka Stock Exchange about how to improve stakeholder engagement. He has taught hundreds of Japanese executives how to re-think, re-energize, and turbo-charge their global communications.

Award-winning author, editor, teacher, lecturer, executive consultant, media trainer, and much more — Russell is one of Tokyo’s leading exponents of integrated, high-impact strategic communications for both public and private organizations.

 

Dr. Nanae Baldauff is an Associate Research Fellow at UNU-CRIS (Bruges, Belgium) and Senior Researcher at Keio Research Institute at SFC (Shonandai, Japan). She recently completed a Ph.D. in Political Science (Ghent University, Belgium), and holds a master’s degree in European Governance (University of Luxembourg). She has a certificate of International Law from the Beasley School of Law (Temple University, Japan Campus). Her Ph.D. focused on Japan’s defense cooperation with strategic partners from the perspective of Japan’s national security objectives. The research examined the purposes of Japan’s defense engagement in the areas of defense equipment and technology cooperation, military exercises and capacity building. She is a recipient of the Japan Foundation fellowship. She has been a guest lecturer at the University of Luxembourg, Trier University (Germany), and Ghent University.

In addition to her academic carrier, Nanae has extensive professional experience at the United Nations University headquarters in Tokyo as governing board and legal administrator. She has a wealth of experience in the area of institutional strategy development and partnerships linking government ministries, education/research industries, and commercial companies. She has managed large budgets, off-shore offices, and oversight of a range of portfolios including drafting and negotiating agreements, donor relations, planning and management of board meetings, administration and liaison support. Prior to that she worked for major US investment banks in the compliance and risk management administration.

Her area of interest is Japan’s foreign and defense policy, Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific regional vision and security community, geopolitics and geoeconomics in the Indo-Pacific, defense industry cooperation, cybersecurity and security of the space domain.

Geoff Newman has been active in Asia-Pacific since 1980, when he became Columbia
University’s first exchange student to Peking University. He established the Collins
Aerospace (Hamilton Standard) business office in Hong Kong in 1985, marketing
aerospace products in China and Asia Pacific. In 1991 he expanded to Japan, opening
their business office in Tokyo, and has been working in Japan and the region since.
Currently, he is an international business development leader for Silicon Sensing, which
is a Collins Aerospace (UK) joint venture with SPP (Sumitomo Precision Products) for
sensors and inertial measurement.

Geoff’s mission has been to develop and maintain relationships with key customers and
suppliers while pursuing new business relationships, primarily through partnership,
across the aerospace and industrial markets for Collins Aerospace. He has been with
Collins since 1985 and has built a broad background in the aerospace industry and
international marketing. He has held various positions in international marketing,
business development and program management for products ranging from propellers
and engine accessories to fuel cells and equipment for space.

A speaker of both Chinese and Japanese, he has experience working and living in
Japan, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, India, and the Middle East.

Geoff has a bachelor’s degree in international relations and a master’s in Chinese
sociology, both from Columbia University. He has attended several strategic leadership
and professional development programs at Oxford University and Wharton.
He currently resides in New England with his family.

Rabita Jamal has over 20 years of international experience in marketing, business development, and strategic partnerships across a wide range of industries in Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America. As International Marketing Director at ISIC Japan, she supports the Council’s efforts to strengthen business-to-business collaboration between Japanese industry and global partners, with a focus on supply chain cooperation, market engagement, and international partnership development.

She has worked extensively with corporate, government, and institutional stakeholders in building cross-border alliances and advancing collaborative initiatives across defence, technology, and industrial sectors. Drawing on broad cross-sector experience, her work supports ISIC Japan’s mission to foster mutually beneficial industry cooperation in support of security and stability in Japan and the Indo-Pacific region.

Earning a Ph.D. in Astronomy at Kobe University Graduate School of Science and Technology, Yuske started his professional career joining Hitachi Solutions where he was engaged in systems engineering and then to international sales of Interactive Whiteboards for the Oceania region.

After working at Dell as sales for the government of Japan and YSI/Nanotech as a sales engineer for water quality instruments and doppler flow meters, he came back to the space industry and joined JAMSS (Japan Manned Space Systems) to become an instructor for Astronaut and Flight Controller training and inter-agency coordination for scheduling astronaut training.

Yuske later was transferred to JAXA to provide training support for the JAXA Astronauts, especially Norishige Kanai, in preparation for his mission on board the International Space Station (Exp 54/55). Yuske decided it was time for him to return to the private sector, and after working at Astroscale at Sales & Marketing, next at Space BD for business development in North America and Oceania, and then GITAI Japan as the first sales representative, he joined Axiom Space in November 2022 as the APAC Sales Manager.