[Weekend Short] My Personal Inspiration: Richard Koo

Today’s entry is short, but one that hits rather close to home.

Do you recognize this man?

No idea? Little suprise; after all, he’s fairly unknown outside the corporate world. His name is Richard Koo. I want to follow in his footsteps.

For the unenlightened, Richard Koo is a Taiwanese-American (sounds familiar yet?) and the incumbent chief economist for the Nomura Research Institute. He has served as an economic advisor for a number of Japanese prime ministers. He is completely bilingual in Japanese and English, and is a graduate from UC Berkeley and John Hopkins University.

What’s more, Koo’s book, The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics – Lessons from Japan’s Great Recession, is one that I highly recommend, as it contains some interesting insights on monetary and fiscal policies.

This is the type of man that I aspire to be. An educated individual working in Japan for a Japanese organization, for the sake of Japan’s economic future. The facts that he is of a similar background to mine, speaks business-level Japanese fluently, writes proficiently and is a graduate from two top-tier American universities are just icing on top of the cake.

Some people quote athletes as people he/she aspires to be. Others make note of billionaires and entrepreneurs who have made it big in the corporate world.

Me? I quote Richard Koo, and simply laugh at the blank stares that follow.