Staff and Board

Staff and Board

Densho Staff

Tom Ikeda, Executive Director
Tom is the founding Executive Director of Densho. He is a sansei (third generation Japanese American) who was born and raised in Seattle. Tom's parents and grandparents were incarcerated during World War II at Minidoka, Idaho. For the past eleven years Tom has volunteered his services to work at Densho. Prior to working at Densho, he was a Product Group General Manager at Microsoft Corporation where he developed multimedia CD-ROM titles. Tom also worked as a research engineer developing hemodializers (artificial kidneys) with Cordis Dow Corporation and as a financial analyst at the Weyerhaeuser Company. Tom graduated from the University of Washington with a BS in Chemical Engineering, BA in Chemistry and an MBA. Recent awards include being the 2004 recipient of the Humanities Washington Award for outstanding achievement in the public humanities and a 2004 recipient of the JACL Japanese American of the Biennium award.

Megan Asaka, Visual History Coordinator

Geoff Froh, Director of Information and Technology
Geoff is responsible for the behind-the-scenes technical infrastructure supporting Densho. Though trained as a social scientist, he has spent more than a decade designing and developing internet-based technologies for a variety of not-for-profit ventures, including the National Policy Association, the national network of Japan-America Societies and most recently, the Center for Internet Studies at the University of Washington. Born and raised in the Washington, DC metro area, Geoff has a BA in Asian Studies from the University of Virginia and a MS in Information Management from the University of Washington. His interests range from information science to political thought in 19th century Japan, and -- when he is not chained to a computer -- Geoff enjoys engaging in ill-conceived mountain-biking expeditions.

Dana Hoshide, Production Manager
Dana is a yonsei (fourth generation Japanese American) who was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, but grew up in Seattle. She first learned about the incarceration in part from her maternal and paternal grandparents who were incarcerated at Tule Lake and Minidoka camps during World War II. She graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in American Ethnic Studies in 1998, and has worked for Densho ever since. Her work with the project includes videography, digitizing visual history interviews, and processing interview transcripts and historic photographs and documents.

Patricia Kiyono, Communications Director
Patricia first volunteered for Densho when it was only an idea. She is pleased to be a returning employee after a stint as a grantwriter for a literary arts organization. Her duties for Densho comprise the e-newsletter, annual report, press materials, website text, grant proposals, outreach planning, and editing anything that lands on her desktop. Patricia has ten years of experience working as a book editor for museums, university presses, and trade publishers. She earned a B.A. in art history from Oberlin College. In her spare time she volunteers for nonprofit organizations and has every intention of tidying up her garden.

Naoko Magasis, Special Events Manager

Virginia Yamada, Operations Manager

Board

Scott Oki, Oki Developments
Scott Oki is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Oki Developments, Inc., and is a professed entrepreneur, venture capitalist, philanthropist, and community activist. His personal mission statement is "to marry my passion for things entrepreneurial with things philanthropic in a way that encourages others to do the same." Prior to founding Oki Developments, Scott retired after ten years with Microsoft Corporation where he held a variety of executive positions. Scott serves on dozens of advisory boards and boards of directors for both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. He has founded or co-founded more than a dozen not-for-profit organizations.

William (Bill) Kazuo Bryant, Envision Ventures
Bill Bryant is a sansei who was born and raised in Honolulu. As a Hawaiian resident, his mother was not incarcerated, but she remembers Pearl Harbor Day when she came home to find her father burning "everything Japanese" in the backyard because "there was going to be trouble." Bill is currently CEO of Envision Ventures. Previously, he was a partner with a large international venture capital firm, Atlas Ventures, and has been involved as a founder, board member, and investor with a number of software and Internet startups in the Seattle area.

Mark Fukunaga, Servco Pacific
Mark Fukunaga is the chairman and CEO of Servco Pacific Inc., whose core businesses are automotive retailing and distribution, home products distribution, and insurance services. He also oversees Servco's private equity investments. Mark joined Servco in 1988, prior to which he was a corporate attorney with Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton in New York, and previously worked for Senator Daniel Inouye. Mark sits on a number of boards, including Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, Outrigger Enterprises, Nippon Golden Network, Pomona College, Punahou School, and the Japanese American National Museum.

Brenda Handley, Gobo Enterprises
Brenda Handley declares, "I bring a passion to every endeavor." Her current endeavor is Gobo Enterprises, providing strategic business planning, sales and marketing consulting, Pacific Rim trade expertise, and leadership and team coaching. She is the former CEO of NW Suites (now Aboda, Inc.), listed in Best Companies to Work For by Washington CEO Magazine in 2005. She serves as a consultant on women’s business development for corporations and universities. Brenda’s community involvement includes chairing the development committee of the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason, serving as a director of the Japan America Society of the State of Washington, and co-chairing (with Mayor Greg Nickels and City Councilman Nick Licata) the Annual Sister Cities Awards Ceremony in 2008. Brenda was a finalist for a Nellie Cashman Award for Women Business Owners in 2002.

Tom Ikeda, Densho
See above

Gene Kanamori

Tomio Moriguchi, Uwajimaya
Tomio Moriguchi is chairman of Uwajimaya, Inc., the largest family-owned Asian food and merchandise business in the Pacific Northwest. His father opened the first store in 1928 and restarted the business in Seattle's International District after the family was released from Tule Lake camp. A respected civic volunteer, Tomio has served on advisory and governing boards for numerous business, educational, and cultural organizations, including the International District Improvement Association, Japan-America Society of Washington State, KCTS Television, LEAP (Leadership Education for Asian Pacific), National Japanese American Memorial Foundation, Nikkei Concerns, Seattle Art Museum, and University of Washington. Tomio was recognized by the YMCA in 2001 for his many years of volunteerism.

Franklin Odo, Smithsonian Institution
Franklin Odo is Director of the Asian Pacific American Program at the Smithsonian Institution as well as a curator at the National Museum of American History. His academic background was in traditional Asian studies, but in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he joined the movement to create Asian American and other ethnic studies in California. Since then he has taught at the University of Hawaii and at many other campuses, including in Japan and at Hunter College, University of Maryland, Princeton, and Columbia University. He is the author of No Sword to Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawai'i during World War II; editor of The Columbia Documentary History of the Asian American Experience; and a coeditor of A Pictorial History of the Japanese in Hawai'i and Roots: An Asian American Reader.

Ron Tanemura, Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Ron Tanemura is an advisory director and retired partner for Goldman, Sachs & Co. He was a Managing Director at Salomon Brothers and at Deutsche Bank. During his twenty years in banking, he managed a variety of fixed income sales and trading businesses in London, New York, and Tokyo and is an architect of the Credit Derivatives market. Ron received a B.A. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley in 1985, where he serves as a member of the Executive Board of the College of Letters and Science. Ron is also an active board member of Social Venture Partners.