FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Washington, D.C. September 7, 2022, the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) and the U.S. CULCON Panel are pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Kenneth Siegel, Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson, and Dr. Jolyon Baraka Thomas to serve as commissioners and panelists.
Since its establishment, JUSFC has made a vital contribution to supporting the U.S.-Japan Alliance through people-to-people exchange. In the past nearly 45 years, JUSFC has awarded institutional grants that have enhanced the Japan Studies field in the United States at all levels. By supporting American studies in Japan, bilateral artists exchanges, policy dialogues, legislative exchanges, and student mobility, JUSFC has made a significant contribution to developing leaders in all sectors of society, including U.S. and Japanese political institutions, private sector commerce, education and cultural institutions and civil society organizations.
Created in 1961, CULCON is a U.S.-Japan advisory committee that meets biannually in alternating years between Japan and the United States. The U.S. CULCON is a high-level, proactive organization that emphasizes the implementation of recommendations, and creates important interventions in U.S.-Japan educational and cultural exchange.
JUSFC/U.S. CULCON Chair Dr. Sheila A. Smith remarked, “the new commissioners/panelists will make a significant contribution to the work of JUSFC and U.S. CULCON by bringing a breadth of proficiency from university administration and partnership building to Japan Studies and U.S-Japan trade and economics. They represent not just a wide range of professional expertise, but also the diversity of the United States. I am delighted to welcome our three new JUSFC commissioners and U.S. CULCON panelists whose remarkable talent and experience will be an asset to our organizations’ work as we resume U.S.-Japan programming and exchanges, and the support and mentoring of diverse scholars and practitioners.”
Paige Cottingham-Streater, JUSFC’s Executive Director added, “JUSFC and U.S. CULCON welcome our new commissioners/panelists at this important time for the world. We thank our outgoing commissioners Dr. Patricia Maclachlan, Dr. Leonard Schoppa, and Mr. David Sneider for their distinguished service through the COVID-19 pandemic; their thoughtful and action-oriented responses to the national reckoning on race and ever-evolving international challenges; and their contribution to Japan Studies. We look forward to working with Dr. Teniente-Matson, Dr. Thomas, and Mr. Seigel. The individual and collective expertise they bring to JUSFC and CULCON is invaluable to our work.
About the Commissioners/Panelists
Mr. Ken Siegel is managing partner of the Tokyo office of Morrison Foerster and head of the office’s 50 lawyer M&A team. Mr. Siegel is consistently ranked as one of the leading U.S. lawyers in Japan. Among other notable accomplishments, he is the only lawyer to be ranked as a “Star Individual” for M&A in Japan (the level above Band 1) by Chambers Global for twelve consecutive years (2011-2022); he was also ranked in the Band 1 category for the prior decade. Mr. Siegel has appeared on CNBC and PBS’s Nightly Business Report in their coverage of Japanese legal developments, as well as on the cover of The American Lawyer in its survey of global law firms. He was also recognized by The American Lawyer as “Dealmaker of the Week” for his work on SoftBank’s $21.6 billion acquisition of Sprint, a transaction that was named the Global M&A Deal of the Year by The American Lawyer and for his work on Hitachi’s $5 billion sale of its hard disk drive business to Western Digital. Mr. Siegel was recently named by The Financial Times as the Most Innovative Legal Practitioner in the Asia-Pacific region as part of its Innovative Lawyers 2022 Awards. The award recognizes the region’s leading legal innovator including those with a major influence on their firm, the legal industry, business, and wider society.
Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson is the President of Texas A&M University-San Antonio (A&M-SA). In 2016, she led the university’s transformation from upper division to a comprehensive master’s university in addition to achieving the U.S. Department of Education Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) designation. Dr. Teniente-Matson has been recognized world-wide and nationally for her leadership and service and is a sought-after author, speaker, and mentor on traditional and contemporary issues in higher education leadership. In 2020, she was awarded the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership’s 2020 US-Japan Public Intellectual, and in 2019 she was recognized as a Network for Change and Continuous Innovation’s (NCCI) top 20 Thought Leaders in Change and Innovation. Dr. Teniente-Matson created the President’s Commission on Equity (PCOE) to advance equity and inclusion. She serves on numerous national educational-governing and local civic boards. She is also a member of TIAA’s Inclusion and Diversity Council, and currently serves on the City of San Antonio Mayor’s Commission on the Status of Women. An advocate for continuing education, Dr. Teniente-Matson earned her Bachelor of Arts in Management from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, her Master of Business Administration from the University of Alaska Anchorage, and a doctorate in Educational Leadership from Fresno State.
Dr. Jolyon Baraka Thomas is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His first book, Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan, appeared with University of Hawai`i Press in 2012. His 2019 monograph, Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan, received an award for excellence in the study of religion from the American Academy of Religion in 2020. His third book, Difficult Subjects: Religion and the Politics of Public Education in Japan and the United States, is now under contract with University of Chicago Press. Dr. Thomas’s academic articles have appeared in journals such as the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Material Religion, and Nova Religion. He also has bylines at public-facing venues such as Dharma World, Killing the Buddha, the Marginalia Review of Books, Nippon.com, The Revealer, Sacred Matters, and Tricycle. Dr. Thomas holds a PhD in Religion from Princeton University. He also holds degrees from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Grinnell College.