Rika Nakazawa
Rika is a senior leader, angel investor, best-selling author, and frequent public speaker on technology-powered industry transformation. She is Global Vice President within NTT’s New Ventures & Innovation team where she is building Agile Co-innovation practices for emerging technologies like 5G, Edge, AI and IoT. In her additional role as Head of Sustainability for Americas at NTT, Rika is driving NTT’s sustainability ambition in operations while also orchestrating the go-to-market for NTT’s climate-positive solutions across their portfolio of digital infrastructure solutions. In 2022, Rika was awarded “Power 70” recognition for the Women of Channel awards with The Channel Co’s CRN network.
Trilingual in Japanese, German, and English, Rika grew up in Japan and moved to the US to attend Princeton University. Rika has since worked internationally for over two decades in senior executive roles in strategy, business development, consulting, and marketing with Fortune 500 companies – Accenture, NVIDIA, Capgemini, Sony, American Express – and Silicon Valley startups. She is a Digital Transformation veteran and has served on multiple start-up boards in Next-Generation Computing, Blockchain, Cybersecurity, and AI ecosystems. Rika is currently board chair at STRIDES AI – a social impact venture that is accelerating bringing gender diversity to the C-suite and boardroom and is the best-selling author of “Dear Chairwoman”, featuring the trials and triumphs of global women corporate board leaders. Her next book will focus on the intersection of ESG, Digital Innovation, and the Pandemic, called “The White Swan”.
Live Talks:
Ep 38. Rika Nakazawa - Let the Shape Emerge
EPISODE SUMMARY
In this episode #38, we speak with Rika Nakazawa. Rika is a senior leader, entrepreneur, investor in, and frequent public speaker on, technology-powered business transformation. She is the CEO and Founder of BoardSeatMeet, a Silicon Valley social impact venture, that focuses on diversifying the board room by empowering women to build and leverage social capital with modern technology. Trilingual in Japanese, German and English, Rika grew up in Japan and moved to the US initially to attend Princeton University. She is a technology industry veteran who has worked internationally in senior executive roles in strategy, business development, and marketing with Fortune 500 companies that include NVIDIA, Sony, Accenture, American Express, and also several Silicon Valley startups. Rika is passionate about deepening the intersection of human and digital paradigms through transformational innovation and the pursuit of purpose-driven collaboration.
EPISODE NOTES
In this episode, you will learn:
- Why there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
- Why you should chip away at a stone to let the shape emerge rather than try to chip away to make a shape.
- How in today's climate you can't fear technology - use it to help drive change.
Discussed in this episode:
