Director and Vice-chair of the Board, NPO GEWEL.
Vice President and Head of Human Resource, SAP Japan.
Special Advisor, Gender Equality Promotion, City of Yokohama.
Ms. Achilles started her career at Fuji Xerox Learning Institute as an intercultural communication consultant. Then she assumed Human Resource leadership positions for Japan and Asia Pacific at Citibank, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Sumitomo 3M. She was Executive Officer for Human Resources at Aozora Bank and Corporate Officer for Public Relations, Corporate Social Responsibility, Environment Planning, Consumer Information, and Organizational Change at Shiseido.
Ms. Achilles is a member of the Women Empowerment Committee of the Japan Productivity Center, on the Selection Committees of Women’s Empowerment Award, Japan HR Award, and Good Action Award. She also represented Japan at the APEC Conferences on “Women and the Economy” in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and was a founding member of Japan Diversity Network.
Ms. Achilles graduated from Sophia University with a BA in Business Administration and from Fielding Graduate University with an MA in Organization Management.
She is married to an American and has two daughters.

A graduate of the Shizuoka University, Akiko Kawai joined Yokogawa Hewlett-Packard (now Japan Hewlett-Packard), working first in sales support organization for eight years, followed by 15 years in marketing as a product manager, business planner and localization manager. She moved to the human resources side of the firm in 1996, remaining there for another 15 years until she reached HP's mandatory retirement age in 2011.
As the head of Hewlett-Packard's employee welfare, she reformed the program. In 2004, she was chosen to lead the Diversity and Employee Career, where she boosted diversity and career support as well as the employment of handicapped people through the SEED Center, ISC (International Service Center). She also helped speed up the promotion of female employees, started a networking group for women, and supported the internal talent management program.
One of Ms. Kawai's more recent projects was to launch Women's Summit Tokyo, which developed into a joint operation among multiple companies, and which she now takes part from GEWEL. She is considered one of Japan's pioneers in the promotion of diversity, and frequently presents on the topic.

Graduated from Kumamoto University with a BS in Electrical Engineering in 1966.
In 1973, he joined HP Japan, as a sales engineer at medical product group and as a marketing engineer at HP Medical division in Boston, and then assumed a General Manager in HP Medical Japan. In 1992, he changed his career to work at HRD community in HP, starting as HP Asia Pacific Education Service Manager in HP Australia and then HRD Manager in HP Japan in 1994. Since then, he achieved 3M$ of HRD business goal within HP Japan by leading a women's work force team and he was also a project manager to deploy the company-wide "Career Self-Reliance" Program within HP Japan.
In 2001, he moved to Ryoyo Electro Corp. as Executive officer for HR. In 2003, He retired from Ryoyo, and started his own business as HRD Consultant.
Before the retirement from HP Japan, he completed the Career Development course at the Graduate School of Keio University in 2000. Since then, working as a visiting researcher at Career Resource Lab, Keio University for 13 years. During this period, he had been heavily involved in delivering the HRD program for the developing country's government officers under a joint project between JICA and Keio University for 8 years. He is a professional career adviser, certified by Career Resource Lab at Keio University and a member of Japanese Academy of HRD.

Formerly with UBS (Director, New Business Group), Mizuho Securities, Goldman Sachs, Dresdner, Gentech Corp (artificial intelligence) and Godrej. Traveled worldwide including Antarctica and worked in Tokyo, Mumbai and New York.
Trilingual (Hindi, English and Japanese) and with 15 years active presence in Japan extensively and frequently contributing to leading media such as NHK, Fuji TV, TBS, Nikkei , Yomiuri, Asahi, Diamond Weekly, Toyo Keizai, etc. Also a frequent speaker at numerous public forums across Japan. Education include Integrated Master of Physics, IIT Kanpur and Master in Applied Finance, Macquarie University.
In 2008, established Japan-India consulting firm Sun & Sands Advisors, and became Representative Director.
Also holds positions as Representative for Japan Branch of Indian Institute of Technology Alumni association, Director of Japan-India Partnership Forum, Advisor for Global Indian International School, Regional Director for GARP, Foreign Correspondent's Club Liaison Committee Chairman, and Representative for Tata Asset Management Japan.