Sanaa, born in California, reports that her interest in Japan dates from a youthful infatuation with manga and anime. She graduated in 2015 from the University of Pittsburgh, where she majored in psychology and minored in chemistry. Sanaa also studied Japanese there and spent a month in Japan after her third year of college. That month included study in a summer program at Sophia University and a three-week homestay with a Japanese family.

“I wanted to retain the Japanese that I was learning in college,” Sanaa recalled, “and applied for internships at Japanese companies during my fourth year at the University of Pittsburgh. Central Glass offered to take me on as an intern for a year. Advanced chemical products have become the biggest and fastest-growing business there, and I suspect that my minor in chemistry was a plus for me in the company’s evaluation.”

Central Glass produces advanced chemicals for the electronics, medical, energy, and other sectors, as well as its namesake products for buildings and automobiles. Its headquarters is in Tokyo, but Sanaa spent her internship at a glass plant operated by a Central Glass subsidiary in Matsusaka, Mie Prefecture. She liked the company, and the people there liked her. Sanaa asked to return as a full-time employee after wrapping up her degree at the University of Pittsburgh, and management was more than happy to offer her a position at the company’s Tokyo headquarters.

Sanaa ’s meishi (business card) reads “Global Business Administration Group, Chemicals Business Administration Department.” That was where she was working when she went on leave to pursue her MBA. Her recent work centered, she says, on upgrading the chemical products sales divisions’ responses to customers’ corporate social responsibility surveys.

“Customers demand thorough documentation of compliance with industry guidelines for diverse aspects of corporate behavior. Our reporting covers things like ensuring, for example, that supply chains don’t entail child labor. Central Glass is totally compliant with the guidelines in question, but the different sales divisions each employed different formats in their reporting. I developed and put in place a standardized format for responding to corporate social responsibility surveys. That has streamlined reporting and made our reporting more transparent.”

Sanaa came to Waseda Business School through a Central Glass initiative for promoting graduate study in MBA and management of technology programs. That initiative provides two years of paid time off to attend graduate school and covers the cost of tuition. Sanaa won company support to enroll in Waseda Business School’s English-language program, and she is emphatic about her reasons for choosing Waseda.

“I probably could have earned my MBA in Japanese, but I decided that doing it in English would allow me to concentrate better on the content that I was after. And Waseda offered a solid MBA program in English. Another thing that figured in my consideration was that a lot of my coworkers at Central Glass are Waseda graduates. That’s the university that you hear mentioned most often at the company.”

Sanaa’s MBA work at Waseda Business School got underway in September 2023. The academic year starts in September for Waseda’s English-language MBA program and in April for the Japanese-language program. Each program includes the core courses, though some of the elective courses are only available in one or the other of the programs. Students in either program have the option of taking courses in the other program. They can take core classes on a pass-fail basis, which alleviates extraneous pressure about achieving high grades in a non-native language. Some of the students in the English-language program at Waseda Business School take Japanese courses, meanwhile, at the university’s Center for Japanese Language.

Central Glass requires employees who are on leave for company-sponsored graduate study to report periodically on their academic activity. “I submit a brief summary of my studies at Waseda Business School to the company each month,” Sanaa said. “And I’ll make a presentation to the company president at the end of my first year and again a year later when I complete the MBA. Those presentations will be opportunities for me to cite issues that I perceive at the company and to make proposals for addressing the issues.”

Sanaa’s MBA thesis will probably be a platform for her proposals to the Central Glass president. But she is devoting priority to her coursework for the time being and will decide on a theme for the thesis, she said, after she has absorbed more knowledge. “I’ve been amazed,” Sanaa marveled, “at the amount of useful information that the courses reveal for me in each subject. And I’m taking as many courses as possible to keep learning more. I learned early on here that I need to get a more holistic grasp of my company. That’s a prerequisite, I now see, for identifying issues and devising solutions there.”

“The coursework at Waseda Business School provides a basic overview of business in the first year,” Sanaa said. “It covers subjects like finance, accounting, human resources, and economics. The classwork becomes more focused in the second year with courses such as those that cover specific aspects of operations management and corporate strategy.”

Interaction with fellow students has also been an important source of insights for Sanaa at Waseda Business School. “Generally, students have at least three years of real-world work experience before entering Waseda Business School. Some of them are here from family businesses, and hearing about their experience in running enterprises has been extremely enlightening. Also enlightening has been the input from students who have professional experience in management consulting. I’m especially interested in the consulting approach because of how it includes utilizing conceptual and operational frameworks. I can see that such frameworks will be useful in contextualizing issues and solutions at Central Glass.”

A strong sense of satisfaction with Waseda Business School’s MBA program resounds through Sanaa’s comments. She noted that the program combines a solid educational framework with support for dealing with life in Tokyo. “I’d been living and working in Japan for several years when I entered the MBA program here. So I spoke the language and knew how to get things done. But students who have just arrived from overseas sometimes need assistance with things like finding apartments and opening bank accounts. That support is available through such platforms as the university’s International Student House and Center for International Education.”

Meanwhile, Sanaa applied for and earned acceptance into a five-day Waseda Business School intensive course in Singapore in early August. That course comprises in-depth analysis of Japanese companies’ operations in other Asian nations. In this way, Sanaa continues to make the most of the opportunities unfolding before her at Waseda Business School.