Rika is a technology leader, VC investor, best-selling author, and frequent public speaker on industry transformation with emerging technologies. She is Chief Commercial Innovation at NTT, a leading technology and business services and solutions provider with more than 340,000 innovators around the world. Her current focus is advancing commercial and sustainability applications of Space & Satellite innovations and orchestrating impact initiatives across global public and private sectors for the next World Expo in Osaka 2025. Rika was selected for the exclusive Forbes 50>50 list in 2024, and for 2 consecutive years in 2022 and 2023 she has been awarded “Power 70” and “Power 80” recognition for the Women of Channel awards with The Channel Co’s CRN network. She has also been ranked as “Top 100 in Emerging Tech” by Women of the Future.
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 in senior executive roles in strategy, business development, consulting, and marketing with Fortune 500 companies – NVIDIA, Accenture, Capgemini, Sony – and Silicon Valley startups. She is a digital innovation veteran and has served on multiple boards in AI, Next-Gen Computing, XR/VR/AR, and Cybersecurity AI ecosystems. Rika was co-founder of STRIDES AI and is currently a board director of Venus Shell Systems – a regenerative blue economy enterprise.
Rika is the best-selling author of “Dear Chairwoman” – featuring the trials and triumphs of women corporate board leaders. Her second book, featuring the intersection of sustainability, digital innovation, and the pandemic, called “Beyond the Black Swan: How the Pandemic and Digital Innovation Intensified the Sustainability Imperative – Everywhere”, was released by business/academic publisher Taylor & Francis in January 2024.