Past Events

The 2nd Session on Feb.5th 2019

The Second Forum Session: Three Committees taking the lead!

More than 70 international leaders & professionals from about 50 companies gathered at Ark Hills Club on Feb. 5th 2019 for the second session of The Third Way Forum. Three initial committees: the Inclusion Committee, the Communication Committee and the Career Advancement committee, were introduced. The venue was organized into three discussion corners and the participants were split into three groups to rotate from one corner to another. In this way, the participants could join all three separate Committee discussions. The discussions at each corner were all facilitated by each committee's members.

Despite the limited time, each corner had very productive and energetic discussions and participants quickly realized that there were many similar issues and recurring themes across industries and companies in Japan. After all the discussions were over, the committee leaders, Sue Gannon from Suntory for the Inclusion Committee, Silvia Bettoschi from JT for the Communication Committee, and Alex Marteau from Nissan for the Career Advancement Committee, summarized the key points of their discussions.
Based on the input received at this Forum session, three committees are going to start discussing and drafting action plans toward solutions and proposals. There were many new participants as well this time and they were actively networking until long after the closing time.
Third Way Forum interns from Tamagawa University were actively taking videos of the participants talking about what the Third Way means to them, in order to create the Third Way Forum Video Message Relay.
The founder and sponsor of Third Way Forum, Reiji Shibata, mentioned in his closing remarks that he would like to see some white papers at the end of the year that Third Way Forum could officially issue for the Japanese society.
The Chief Director of Third Way Forum, Satoshi Ishizaka, stated in his last comment to the audience that, “Many Japanese management teams and executives need a serious kick in their butt if they want their companies to succeed. I would like to see that, we, the Third Way Forum, could kick their butt so professionally, elegantly and with our love for Japan that we can help them accelerate their required transformation!”.

Now the Third Way Forum is gaining more traction and moving forward with three initial committees, to take actions beyond having just discussions.

Let’s work together to grow the Third Way Forum network so that it becomes large and influential enough to being taken seriously and affect change in Japanese society!