A Broad Perspective Opens New Global HorizonsYumiko Murakami, head of the Tokyo Centre of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, has pursued a career path that has shifted dy-namically between public and private sectors, and dipped back into academia, in order to maximize both her personal potential and contributions to society. When Murakami attended Sophia University in the late 1980s, the East and the West were still divided by the Cold War, and she did not miss the opportunity that accompa-nied those tense times. “I wanted to study international re-lations. That is why I chose Sophia, which was, and still is, an excellent institution to learn anything to do with global studies,” she recalls. Pondering what exactly to choose as her specialization, Murakami came to realize that there was little understanding among international society of the social and economic structures of the Soviet Union: the other side of the Cold War equation, so to speak. She thus enrolled in the Rus-sian program at Sophia, which both opened up new possibili-ties and gave her a competitive advantage in terms of rarity and expertise. “It was a demanding and comprehensive pro-gram,” she reflects. “I learned not just the language but also the political and economic systems, cultural background, his-tory, literature, and so on. The time at Sophia gave me a good foundation from which I was able to expand my horizons.” During her university days, she spent her holidays back-packing across the globe. “As I traveled to various countries, developing and developed, including Russia,” Murakami re-members, “I met the locals as well as travelers from around the world. Studying is one thing but experiencing is another.” Witnessing the lives of people outside Japan gave her differ-ent perspectives on the overall picture of what was driving the global economy and political order, and Japan’s place in all of this. Murakami’s experiences during her four years at Sophia were not the only factor that led her to choose to pursue her mas-ter’s degree at Stanford University. “The natural path would have been to find a job in Japan after graduating from univer-sity, but it was still difficult for women to get a professional job in Japan even after the passing of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law in 1986,” explains Murakami. She studied at Stanford for two years, before joining the United Nations. “The decision to work for an international organization came to me naturally after all I had been through; my studying international relations and traveling. I had interests in dif-ferent cultures, peoples, and languages, as well as economic and social structures,” she says. Murakami was first assigned to the UN office in Barba-dos, where she stayed for almost two years, with a mission to engage in projects totally or partially funded by the UN that supported local society. “My first project, and the most important one, was to set up a credit union, which is like Top: Graduation day Bottom: With Margaret ThatcherMobility Between Public and Private SectorsFoundations of a First Career with the UN21Sophia People
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