Meetings and decision-making in Japan

Indranil is a Certified Corporate Director, Chartered Engineer, and leader in insurance and technology. He is a Non-Executive Director on several boards, Managing Partner at Gekkō Advisory, Associate Professor at City, St George’s University of London, a Visiting Fellow in AI Evaluations, a Visiting Lecturer in Engineering Management at Loughborough University, and a Lecturer at Chuo University teaching Comparative Management. Indranil has lived in Japan for over 20 years, is a native Japanese speaker, and has led high-level trade dialogues. He promotes bilateral investment, SME access, technology collaboration, innovation, and a long-term UK–Japan economic partnership, strengthening ties across industries and growth. An alumnus of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, he earned an MBA and a PhD in Engineering Management. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors and the Chartered Institute for IT. He was named one of the Top 100 Diverse Leaders in Tech in 2021.

Fujiko Amano brings a unique mixture of private and public sector expertise in trade and investment. She served as Director for Investment Collaboration at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, where she assisted in organizing the IoD Mission to Japan in 2025. Prior to METI, as a New York licensed lawyer, she served as a trade negotiator for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and worked at top-tier global law firms. Presently, she works at PHC Holdings Corporation and Musashino University as a part-time lecturer. She holds academic degrees from the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics.

Madeleine is a Global Marketing Consultant. She began her marketing career in Sweden at SKF, a leading global bearing manufacturer, and relocated with the company to the UK in 1997. She now runs her own B2B marketing consultancy, Lena O Consulting. She has led strategic marketing initiatives across various sectors, including marine, energy, material handling, and food & beverage. Madeleine also has extensive experience in developing and optimising distribution channels worldwide, with deep insights into value chains and key industry stakeholders. She is also a UK correspondent for a US trade magazine, Elevator World, following industry trends and writing articles for the UK and European markets. Madeleine has previously lived in Japan for two years and speaks Japanese.

Masako Eguchi-Bacon is the founder and CEO of Ocean Bridge Management (OBM), a London-based advisory firm that helps UK and Japanese companies navigate new market entry and investment deals. Before founding OBM sixteen years ago, Masako built her career inside Ingram Micro, a large US multinational, where she served as Head of Japan Office and also led European-level projects, working across three distinct corporate cultures. That experience gave her first-hand insight into how Japanese, American and European companies make decisions, and why many promising UK-Japan deals stall despite goodwill on both sides.

Rie is a highly accomplished global finance business leader, representing financial institutions, pension funds, insurance funds, debt funds, and family offices. She is the Founder of ’Saloon de Branch of Wisdom’ and serves as Vice Chair of the IoD Japan Group. Rie is a Special Advisor to the Osaka Prefectural Government and a Global Ambassador for the Big Innovation Centre. She received the ’Pro Memoria Medal’ from Poland and the ’Diplomat Award Medal’ from Suatria for her contribution to international relations.