BOARD MEMBERS
(Ex Officio Board Member)
Executive Director, U.S.-Japan Bridging Foundation
Dr. Tom Mason is a specialist in people-to-people diplomacy. He became the first full-time executive director of the U.S.-Japan Bridging Foundation in 2020. Under his leadership, the Foundation has developed comprehensive support before, during, and after the program that includes mentoring, leadership development, and career preparation for emerging U.S.-Japan leaders. He has broadened the Bridging Scholar applicant pool, established new memorial funds, and developed partnerships to strengthen bilateral ties between the United States and Japan.
Prior to joining the Bridging Foundation, Dr. Mason founded and led the ALLEX Foundation for eighteen years, building Chinese and Japanese language programs at over 100 universities and training more than 1,200 instructors, many of whom now teach at Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale, and leading institutions worldwide.
Dr. Mason has held leadership and teaching roles with Columbia University's Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies, Cornell University, and several Japanese institutions. His deep engagement with Japan includes internships with members of both houses of the Japanese Diet and serving as an embedded observer in election campaigns for candidates who later served as Cabinet ministers.
He was selected as a Mansfield Foundation Fellow in 2022 for the U.S.-Japan Network for the Future Program and holds a courtesy affiliation as Associate-in-Research with Harvard University's Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Dr. Mason earned his B.A. and M.A. in Asian Studies from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in East Asian Languages from The Ohio State University, where he studied with Mari Noda, the field's preeminent scholar of Japanese language pedagogy.
In August 2024, the Government of Japan honored Dr. Mason with the Foreign Minister's Commendation (外務大臣表彰) in recognition of his contributions to strengthening U.S.-Japan relations and promoting Japanese language education worldwide.