About Yumi
Yumi Wakayama is an independent global leadership and talent development consultant since 2012. She collaborates with Silicon Valley-based consultants to provide highly engaging and immersive customized global leadership development programs for Japanese companies.
Previously, Yumi worked more than 15 years at Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania, serving as Director of Asian Executive Programs at its Aresty Institute of Executive Education where she was responsible for marketing of open-enrollment and custom programs as well as design and delivery of custom programs in Asia, primarily focusing on Japanese companies. She has worked as Program Director for custom clients including Toyota, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Fuji Xerox and Daiwa Securities. She continues to be affiliated with Wharton School as Senior Fellow at its Center for Human Resources.
Prior to joining Wharton Executive Education, she worked as a management consultant at Coopers & Lybrand Consulting in Japan with practice areas including new business development and new market entry strategies. She has also worked in Nomura School of Advanced Management, an executive education provider affiliated to Nomura Securities, as a program design and delivery staff and IBM Japan as an operating planning and control staff. Her areas of current interest include global leadership development, team effectiveness, creativity & innovation and challenges & opportunities faced by Japanese companies in a rapidly changing global economic landscape.
She earned her MBA from London Business School and BA from International Christian University in Tokyo. She is Japanese by nationality but has living and business experiences in the US and Europe.
Yumi lives in Tokyo with her husband, son and a Bernese mountain dog.