A Tribute to a Trailblazer, Pioneer and Incredible Business Person

There are some things that just aren’t right. Like watching an elderly man giving the tribute to his 55-year-old daughter in front of a room full of people he doesn’t know. It’s not right. So many flowers. So many people. So many tears stifled and flowing from the men and women. It’s just not right. But it was a lovely, tasteful and fitting tribute. 

2 months earlier:

We were heading home in the back of a taxi from the Women in Business Conference in Odaiba. As usual there was an address from the Prime Minister, Governor Koike of Tokyo was in attendance and a slew of the usual names and faces who represent the good and the great in female leadership and sponsorship in Tokyo. One was notable by their absence.

Haruno Yoshida.

Now as I type this I feel extremely sad and the emotion is rising and I want to be very clear; she was not a personal friend, nor did I work closely with her as some of my friends and collaborators did. But I adored her. It is safe to say I am a fan girl. Still. 

And it is safe to say that in that taxi was filled with fan girls. A law pioneer, Diversity and Inclusion Pioneer, Executive Director Pioneer and a Coach. And for the entire journey we talked about his incredible women and we had stories to share. 

Like the time I first met her and was seated next to her at a British Chamber or Commerce event. She had this way of speaking to each person with interest and at just the right level. Believe me this is a skill. I have sat next to less successful executive women or male leaders before who have literally turned their back on me once they clocked I was a few rungs behind them or a bit shy. Not Haruno Yoshida. She made you feel like what you were saying was extremely important. That you are as important as she is. Which is true whether you be the cleaner or the Chief Executive Officer. But the ability to make someone FEEL that way is another matter.

That day she had long, drag-queen-like nails that she said her assistant was always trying to make her tone down because the executive and high level men who she sat around tables with discussing the finer points of technology deals would be distracted, glancing disapprovingly. Also high heels, high hair and high fashion. Also high femininity. And make no mistake. High masculinity too. 

That high masculinity I experienced when I saw her on a panel back in Shine Weeks 2015. A panel of experts was talking in front of an audience of young people from the British School and some universities. talking about Women’s Leadership and challenges and calls to action. We went across the panel and each member said something as you might expect. It’s hard, you can’t change the system so you have to fit it. Haruno, in her higher than high heels, extreme make up, coiffed hair and daring suit took the mic, turned to the audience and said, in her American-Japanese accent “ I LOVE IT!” with more than a dramatic flourish. Again I am filled with emotion and a huge grin, because it was so daring and it was so unexpected. I can remember sitting up and listening and there was a kind of collective GASP. “I have power, I control budgets of millions and millions of pounds and I get to travel the world. It’s fantastic being in this position”. Mic drop. that was one of those moment that shifted something inside me on the cellular level. recreated my neurals.

Now, she was also very open about the impact on her daughter and how she was consistently in the position of choosing work or her daughter, often choosing work. That choice led her to be the Japan President of BT, the first women in the Keidanren, then the co-chair of the W20 Japan Steering Committee. Much to admire. 

Awe.

I also saw her at one of the previous Women in Business Conferences, in fact each time she came on, entertained, informed, talked about her choices and always spoke off the cuff, never scripted. Last year she wore full kimono - she looked terrific and joked about how the people in attendance at the hotel had treated her as though she were a foreigner. Now the nuance of this may be lost on international readers but she is a Japanese woman but gives off such a different kind of energy; unique, eccentric, friendly, animated, lively, straightforward, playful, energetic that they read her as not Japanese, but dressed beautifully in a kimono! This is hilarious in the Japanese context but also contains layers of meaning and if I’m honest, micro-aggressions that I’m sure, she as the only woman in so so many rooms had to absorb, deflect, address or ignore. These are not facts. These are my assumptions. I never really saw her play victim, but stories like that are allegorical, at least to this story-loving mind. I admired her so much. that’s before you even get into the fact that with such a high profile and being the first woman to to this and be that, she was derided in the tabloids, luckily I am not able to read those, but I understand it was pretty fierce.

We exchanged these stories in the the back of the cab, all the way from Odaiba to Roppongi, laughed and literally talked about how much we loved her and what a joy she was - aspirational, entertaining and simply an incredible business and policy person. Fan girls.

The following day, not 12 hours later, we received an email.

“Shocking News”

The subject header.

What we read next was unfathomable. On June 30th 2019 Haruno Yoshida died. Her heart. 55.

Immediate phone calls and a lot of tears and disbelief.

Not two days before she had been in attendance at the W20.

Her family had chosen a very private experience of this and 2-3 weeks later, the Keidanren was beginning to role the news out.

We were collectively heartbroken. For all of it. For the loss of this leader, this business person, this energy, this woman - oh this woman. So feminine, with her low cut tops (scandalous!) her bright jackets (Gasp) and her bold make up (WOW) and her business smarts, her policy influence, her presence. HER PRESENCE.

I am annoyed.

In the same way that the loss of Prince, David Bowie, Zaha Hadid and Anita Roddick’s passing annoyed me. I want a world with these people in it. Present. Influencing culture into their old age. 

Being there so that people like me can have something, just someone who resembles our heart and soul and is also there, being unusual, eccentric, award-winning architects, incredible entrepreneurs, musical geniuses, or like Ms Yoshida, the first. First female President of a foreign company in Japan, first to be on the Japanese Trade Federation, this force of nature. This role model extraordinaire. this beacon of creative and business excellence. Of style and credibility. Of elegance and irreverence in equal measure.

And so, as I laid my flower with all the other thousands of flowers at the foot of her picture and then walked through the gallery of her with world leaders, but also at school and university and as a baby. I made a commitment. To honor her memory. I wont disclose it. But it’s hard to know what to pray for in a case like this. Someone a mere 7 years older than me passing. Especially someone SO important to the culture of this country. Such a void opens where she was. It’s hard to make sense of.

And so I commit. A private petition to an incredible person. 

Haruno Yoshida - thank you. 

Thank you.

ありがとう