Aya Haruyama - Forbes Japan 30 under 30 Award in Business & Finance & Impact Sector

Aya Haruyama, Class of 2012 and Co-Boarding House Captain, has been recently chosen by Forbes Japan as an Honoree in the Forbes Japan 30 under 30 in the business/finance/Impact sector. She also received a Founders Award from her employer, KKR last year. KKR is a leading global investment firm that offers alternative asset management as well as capital markets and insurance solutions. Both awards are huge honours for someone who is still only 29 years old and working in quite a male dominated field. 

After leaving Somerville House, Aya graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce from University of Melbourne where she also worked part-time as a Research Assistant at the Asian Law Centre due to her bilingual skills. She then moved to Tokyo to work for Macquarie Capital then shifted to work for global investment fund KKR in Tokyo in October 2018 where she is now an Associate.  She has worked on buyout deals for Seiyu, KJR Management, DataX, Netstars and Owndays and is now a Board Member for Owndays and an Auditor for Seiyu/Seiyu Holdings (operator of Seiyu, Japanese national supermarket chain). 

Aya was born in Cairns but her family moved to Japan when she was 3 so she went to Japanese daycare then a local Japanese primary school until she moved back to Australia for high school. Her parents remained living in Kobe, Japan while Aya and her older brother went to boarding school in Brisbane.  She had very limited English when she started at Somerville but worked extremely hard to gain fluency as her father and Australian mother, Cindy Lineburg, also an Old Girl from the Class of 1983,  spoke Japanese at home.  As Aya's Dad became the primary caregiver, she had little exposure to English until high school.

Aya's mother, Cindy started her career in Japan working for the Kobe City government for 4 years from 1997 to 2001 assisting with their international programs.  She has worked for the Australian Trade and Investment Commission in Osaka since 2001 across various sectors to assist Australian companies to identify business opportunities in Japan. Cindy's career highlights include working with the Queensland Ballet Company to facilitate their tour of Japan with The Little Mermaid in 2008 (an 18 month long project), identifying an Osaka-based importer for Maton Guitars and supporting their on-going sales growth in Japan, and working with Tommy Emmanuel (the best known Maton user). Cindy has also worked with the Aged Care sector to organise a number of Japan missions for Australian businesses in the sector and in recent years, I has been working to assist businesses in the Food and Beverage sector  by coordinating wine tasting events/horticulture events. Both Aya and Cindy interpreted for Tommy Emmanuel when he toured Japan.