Masumi Abe

Working Experience

• present:
  Owner and Japan-US Marketing Consultant
  JUST Assist International
  Palo Alto, California
  representing Japanese companies for the US market
  representing American companies for the Japanese market
  including business development, marketing research, marketing support, PR support, media relationship, localization, product presentation, and others

• 2000 - 2000:
  Director of Sales and Marketing
  4DMATRIX
  Mountain View, California
  responsible for developing and managing sales team and marketing team
  products: Kessai.com, WebSho.com to support e-merchants and e-entrepreneurs in Japanese e-commerce community.

• 1996 - 2000:
  Director of Product Marketing
  Sentius Corporation
  Palo Alto, California
  responsible for developing Asian market and Asian language market
  products: RichLink Series, EB (Electronic Books) Player, Mikan Series, and Epistola Series.

• 1993 - 1996:
  Director of Business Development, Asia
  Kaleida Labs, Inc. (a multimedia joint venture between Apple & IBM, no-longer exists)
  Mountain View, California
  responsible for developing Asian market
  products: ScriptX, a complete object-oriented multimedia environment

• 1989 - 1992:
  Manager of Typographic Marketing for Asia
  Adobe Systems Incorporated
  Mountain View, California
  responsible for developing and maintaining the relationship with Asian type industries and designers
  product: Type1 Fonts (Adobe Type Library, Adobe Type Library in Japanese)

• 1986 - 1989:
  Manager of Typographic Development for Japan
  Adobe Systems Incorporated
  Mountain View, California
  responsible for developing the first Type1 Japanese typefaces and the PostScript type market in Japan
  product: PostScript, Type1 Fonts

• 1986:
  Staff of Typography Department
  Adobe Systems Incorporated
  Palo Alto, California
  developing Type1 Font typefaces and corresponding with Japanese customers & potential customers.
  

• 1985 - 1986:
  Staff of Procurement Department
  Semiconductor Division
  Hitachi America Limited
  San Jose, California
  responsible for helping a better communication between US office and HQ in Japan

• 1982 - 1985:
  Project Leader & Language Scientist
  Communication Intelligence Corporation (CIC), the first spin-off of SRI International (formerly known as Stanford Research Institute)
  Menlo Park, California
  responsible for developing the recognition algorythm library for on-line real-time hand-written character recognition systems

• 1977 - 1982:
  Group Leader & Language Technician
  XEROX Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) & Office Product Division (OPD)
  Palo Alto, California
  responsible for developing Japanese laser fonts and developing grammatical processing systems for a Kana-Kanji conversion program used in J-STAR Workstation.

Additional Experience

• 1976 - present:
  Business and Cultural Consultant
  Gave lectures on the historical and cultural issues related to Silicon Valley. Helped creating educational material to teach the Japanese business practice and how to contact and communicate effectively with Japanese business people. Gave lectures on the Japanese business practice and how to contact and communicate effectively with Japanese business people. Translating business and marketing materials for both American and Japanese companies.
• 1984 - 1986:
  Resident Fellow
  Stanford Univ. EAST (East Asian Study Theme) House
  Being an Adviser to the Student Governing Body of the House in Planning Activities and Administrative Issues.
• 1977 - 1986:
  Japanese Cultural Consultant
  Stanford Univ. International Studies
  Helped Developing Japanese Cultural Education Materials for a Japanese Outreach Project
• 1976 - 1983:
  PALM (Program for Advance Language Maintainance) Leader
  Stanford Univ. East Asian Studies
  Planned, Implemented and Conducted the Japanese Language Program for Advanced Students

Education

• 1971:
  Sophia Univ.
  BA in Philosophy
  

Language

• Japanese: Native
  English: Fluent