Honorary Advisor

Richard Lapchick

Richard E. Lapchick is often described as “the racial conscience of sport” – Human rights activist, pioneer for racial equality, internationally recognized expert on sports issues, scholar and author. He brought his commitment to equality and his belief that sport can be an effective instrument of positive social change to University of Central Florida where he accepted an endowed chair in August 2001, and led the program to be named the #1 MBA program in the US for volunteer service in 2009. He is a regular columnist for ESPN.com and The Sports Business Journal, and has spoken in the United States Congress, at the United Nations and in the European Parliament. He also helped found Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society and the National Consortium for Academics and Sport (NCAS). He also helped create National Student-Athlete Day and the Hope for Stanley Foundation, which helped Hurricane victims.

The humanitarian awards he received includes the Lifetime Achievement Award for Work in Civil Rights from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow/Push Coalition (2009), and he has won the Arthur Ashe Voice of Conscience Award, the Women’s Sports Foundation President’s Award, Ralph Bunche International Peace Award, the Wendell Scott Pioneer Award (2004), and the NASCAR Diversity Award (2008). He was inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame of the Commonwealth Nations in the category of Humanitarian along with Arthur Ashe and Nelson Mandela.

Lapchick also received numerous prestigious awards: honored by the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida at its annual Dinner of Tribute (2012); received the Champions Award from the Alliance of Women’s Coaches, the Distinguished Service Award from the Black Coaches Association, the Mannie Jackson Human Spirit Award, and the Pioneer Award from the National Association of Black Journalists (2013). Lapchick was also named one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Sports for six years, one of the 100 Most Influential Sports Educators in America etc. Lapchick was one of 200 guests personally invited by Nelson Mandela to his inauguration after leading the American sports boycott of South Africa from 1975 until the end of Apartheid.

Senior Advisors

Jutta Engelhardt

Jutta Engelhardt studied political science, English language and literature, and Russian philology in Freiburg, Breisgau and at UofT in Toronto, Canada. She also pursued courses in solution-oriented management and evidence-based project planning. From 2000-2007, Jutta worked in the Netherlands as Director of International Programmes and was member of the Management team at Foundation Mainline – an organisation active in the area of prevention of infectious diseases associated to drug use. She managed and coordinated various prevention and awareness-raising projects in Eastern Europe and in Asia. Since May 2008, Jutta Engelhardt manages the Sport & Development unit at SAD and is a member of the Management team at SAD.

Patrick K. Gasser
Former Head of UEFA Football Social Responsibility

Former Head of UEFA Football Social Responsibility

Patrick  K. Gasser lead UEFA’s Football and Social Responsibility (FSR) Unit until the end of 2021. He joined UEFA in 1999, when he began working in the National Associations Division, supporting football development in Eastern Europe. Before coming to UEFA, Patrick worked for thirteen years at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), both in the field and in the Human Resources Department at the headquarters in Geneva. He worked in areas affected by conflict in Africa, Asia and Europe where he had a broad range of responsibilities that included directing relief and protection operations and managing media contacts. Patrick graduated from the School of Economics and Business Administration in Lucerne and also earned a post-graduate degree in Human Resources there. He earned a certificate in Human Resources Management from the University of Geneva and a diploma in Sociology, Politics and Management of Sports from the University of Lausanne. He graduated in Advanced Studies in Corporate Social Responsibility at the University of Geneva, class of 2010. He has married and has two children.

Jürgen Griesbeck
Founder and CEO of streetfootballworld/ Ashoka Fellow

Jürgen Griesbeck is responsible for strategic planning, exploring innovative new fields of activity and developing selected partnerships for streetfootballworld. Jürgen has been interested in the social potential of football since Colombian international Andrés Escobar was murdered for scoring an own goal. This tragedy inspired him to initiate a number of successful projects in Colombia (“Fútbol por la Paz”) and in Germany (“Straßenfußball für Toleranz”). With the launch of streetfootballworld in 2002, Jürgen took his experiences to a global level by connecting a network of community organisations working in the field of “Social change through Football.” He won the Laureus Sport for Good Award in 2006, and has been an Ashoka fellow since 2007 and a Synergos fellow since 2012. In 2011, he was named European Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the Schwab Foundation.

Kayoko Hosokawa
Honorary Chairperson of Special Olympics Nippon
Representative Director of “Wings of Courage”

Kayoko Hosokawa founded Special Olympics Nippon (SON) in 1994 with the basic goal of establishing activities to empower people with intellectual disabilities through sport. Mrs. Hosokawa also took the preeminent role in inviting and organizing the Special Olympics Winter Games in Nagano in February in 2005, leading to the great success of the first-ever Special Olympics World Games in Asia. While she currently serves as the Honorary Chairperson of SON, she founded the Japan Floor Hockey Federation to promote floor hockey as a universal sport, and serves as its Representative Director. Her aim is to create a society where people with and without disabilities care for each other beyond inhibiting social boundaries. In 2007 she founded “NPO Yuki-no Tsubasa (Wings of Courage) Inclusion 2015,” declaring the goal of realizing an inclusive society without any discrimination and prejudice by 2015, to actively work on the education of inclusion and assistance for the employment of the disabled. other social service leadership roles of the wife of former Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa, include being the chair- person of “able Association”, a documentary movie production team whose films depict the “ability” of the disabled. The titles released to date include “able,” “Host Town,” “Believe,” and “Japanese Drums Create Sounds of Happiness – Inclusion -.” In addition, Mrs. Hosokawa serves as the President of “Japan Committee Vaccines for the World’s Children”, which distributes vaccines to the kids of developing countries.

Saburo Takizawa
Chairperson of Japan Association for UNHCR/ Professor
Graduate School of Toyo Eiwa Jogakuin University

Born in Nagano Prefecture, Professor Takizawa studied at Saitama University to graduate in 1972 and at Tokyo Metropolitan University to earn Master’s degree. After serving for Ministry of Justice he earned an MBA from University of California at Barclay (Haas), and upon graduation he passed the CPA examination. His career with the United Nations started in 1981 with UNOG (United Nations Office at Geneva), followed by UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency; 1993-), UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization/ Vienna, Amman and Beirut offices; 1991-), UNHCR (Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; Sep. 2009- ), and he had served as the Head of Japan Office since 2007. He has served as a Guest Professor at the United Nations University since 2008 and as a Professor at the Graduate School of Toyo Eiwa University in Tokyo since 2009.

Mel Young
President and CEO of Homeless World Cup

Mel Young is recognised as one of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Previously he worked as a journalist; co-founded The Big Issue in Scotland in 1993; co-founded Senscot (Social Entrepreneurs Network Scotland); former President and Honorary President of INSP (International Network of Street Papers); also set up City Lynx magazine and New Consumer Magazine; worked on a community newspaper in Wester Hailes in Edinburgh in 1990’s. Currently President and CEO of the Homeless World Cup which he co-founded in 2003. Also a non-executive director on two boards: Sportscotland and Glasgow Culture and Sport; member of the World Economic Forum Sports Agenda Council. He is a lifelong supporter of Hibernian FC and is the author of Goal: the story of the Homeless World Cup.

Advisors

Makiko Akabane
Director, CSR Asia Japan

Makiko Akabane has more than ten years of experience as CSR manager at global firms of various industries, including Starbucks Japan, Sales Force.com, Nikko Asset Management where she helped establish their CSR-related projects. Makiko received Starbucks Japan President Award in 2002, and led Sales Force.com to receive “Nice Support Award” from Sawayaka Foundation, by best coordinating each CSR programs with their own business, while she helped CSR projects overseas in Singapore, Thailand, Korea and China. Makiko earned her politics and biology degrees from Waseda University, and she also learned at master’s schools at University California Riverside, Tuftu and Keio. She is a popular CSR lecture, and spoke for major universities of Seisen, Ricky, and Keio, as well as for APABIS and British Council to name a few.

Norio Machii
Founder and CEO of sinKA, Inc.

Norio Machii has worked on various social projects including volunteer support, internal operations system development, electric library at Nippon Foudnation, and led “CANPAN” project which is one of the most influential NGO/NPO platform in Japan. He also served as Member of “New Public” Consortium on Information Disclosure and Delivery Working Group of Cabinet Office and Jury Member of Social Business Consortium Project of METI, Ministry of Economy, Technology and Information, before launching his own company sinKa, Inc. which support social business.

Chiaki Okada
Associate Professor
Graduate School of Human Sciences at Osaka University

Chiaki Okada is Associate Professor of the Department of Global Human Sciences in the Graduate School of Human Sciences at Osaka University. Graduating from Waseda University, School of Human Sciences, Okada worked in Zimbabwe as a member of JICA volunteers. After returning to Japan, she earned her Master of Education degree from the Graduate School of International Development and Cooperation at Hiroshima University, as she started her NGO activities in Cambodia and African countries. She has research experiences in Cambodia, East Timoｒ, Kosovo, and Bosnia etc. She is Japan’s leading expert in the field of Sport and Development, and has attended many conferences of the topic. Okada has written a number of papers which including “Life-stories Tell on How to Work as an International Volunteer“in 2007, and “Sport and Social Development: Promise and Caution from an Incipient Cambodian Football League.”

Eri Sato
Vice Chairperson of Peace Field Japan/ Representative Director of Flair International

After graduating from Sophia University majoring in English literature, Eri Sato participated in various initiatives that create new values with global mindset, interacting with specialists of environment and futurology, and established Flair International in 1995 which promoted international transfer of environmental techinologies. She has been also  active as environmental journalists, and co-authored “Relaxation Business” (1993) and wrote “The 55 tips for techno-stress” (2002). In 2004 she started organizing exhibitions all over the world of drawings on the topic of peace, while establishing NPO Peace Field Japan to invite children from Israel and Palestine to share time doing sports and conversation sessions, for which she serves as Vice Chairperson.

Naofumi Suzuki
Professor
Hitotsubashi University Graduate School of Social Sciences

Naofumi Suzuki earned his degree in sociology in 1999 and Master’s in civil engineering in 2001 from University of Tokyo. He also learned at University of Glasgow to earn his Doctoral degree in 2007 from Graduate School of Business, Law and the Social Sciences, Department of Urban Studies. His research interests lie in ‘sport and development’, critically looking at the role of sport in both promoting social inclusion and exacerbating social exclusion. He has studied a number of community-based programmes using the elements of sport and leisure to promote social inclusion in different geographical contexts, focusing on poverty and gang violence in post-industrial British cities, rural regeneration in a Japanese mountainous village, HIV/AIDS prevention in Lesotho, World Cup-related SDP programmes in Republic of South Africa, post-disaster reconstruction in Tohoku, and homelessness and excluded youth in Tokyo.

Taro Tamura
Representative Director and CEO
Diversity Japan

Born in Itami-city of Hyogo prefecture, Taro Tamura traveled Asia, Europe, Africa and South-America upon graduation from high school. His working experience with a rental video shop for Filipinos exposed him to the reality of foreign workers in Japan, and on the occasion of the Hanshin earthquake he helped create the Foreigners’ Earthquake Information Center in 2005. Before that he created the Center for Multicultural Information and Assistance in April 1997 and had led the organization with successful progress and growth until March 2004. Since April 2004 he has served as a research editor for the International Institute for Human, Organization and the Earth (IIHOE) with focus on the support of the capacity building of NPOs and the collaboration with local governments. In particular he has contributed to the establishment of optimal framework and systems for social changes in local communities in capacity of non-profit and private sectors. Mr. Tamura also founded the NPO “edge” (Entrance for Designing Global Entrepreneurship) in 2004 utilizing his own social entrepreneurial experience to help the efforts by other young social entrepreneurs, and in January, 2007, he founded and became the representative of Diversity Japan. Mr. Tamura has been very active in SR research and regularly offers training and advises on the diversity strategies to communities facing new diversity-related challenges. Since March 2011he has served as a Planning Officer of the Cabinet Secretariat’s Volunteer Coordination Office to help affected areas as well.