Turning Diversity into Strength: Yasu’s Career Journey Built on the Core of HR

Interviewed and written by Ayako Araki (Hitotsubashi ICS MBA Class of 2024).

Yasutaka (Yasu) Asada, an ICS EMBA graduate, shares his career journey from Fujitsu to leading global HR at Astroscale, highlighting how diverse experiences across Japan and Silicon Valley shaped his perspective on people and organizations. With a foundation in human resources, he reflects on navigating challenges such as being a “returnee” in Japanese corporations, adapting to fast-paced global environments, and embracing diversity as a strength. His time at ICS played a pivotal role in deepening his strategic understanding of HR, helping him connect the dots of his career and redefine his professional identity. Today, he applies these insights to build globally aligned yet locally adaptive HR strategies, offering valuable lessons for professionals seeking to turn diverse experiences into meaningful leadership.

When I first met Yasu (Yasutaka Asada, ICS EMBA Class 2021), I imagined someone who had climbed swiftly through the tech world—an HR leader now shaping the future of a global space startup.

But the story I heard was far richer: years in the trenches of HR at Fujitsu, navigating the “labels” that sometimes follow returnees in Japanese corporations, leading teams within a hyper-growth global firm, and discovering how a series of unexpected moments gradually formed a coherent career “line.”

This is the story of how Yasu connected the dots—across countries, cultures, and organizations—and how ICS’s EMBA program helped deepen his identity as an HR professional in today’s VUCA world.

From Unexpected Assignment to Formative Years: Two Decades at Fujitsu
Yasu spent his childhood overseas and joined Fujitsu in the 1990s, motivated by a desire to work in an international environment.

What he did not expect was his first assignment: Human Resources.

He began in new-graduate recruitment, then took on leadership development using Professor Ikujiro Nonaka’s SECI model—a uniquely ICS-connected concept that shaped his early perspective on knowledge creation and people development.

Later, he served six years as an HRBP for both SE and sales divisions.

He describes this period as when he learned “the reality of HR”—explaining policies, resolving issues on the ground, and negotiating with managers on a daily basis. It strengthened his agility, listening skills, and ability to understand multiple viewpoints.

As a long-term returnee in a large Japanese corporation, Yasu sometimes felt “labeled” or set apart. Yet he eventually reframed this difference as a source of strength. Taking initiative on unnoticed tasks and completing them without fanfare became a foundation for his future leadership style.

“I couldn’t see the line at the beginning. But looking back, the dots have clearly connected.”

Behind this quiet reflection is a steady, pioneering spirit.

A Broader View from Silicon Valley—and a Question That Sparked Further Study

From 2012 to 2016, Yasu spent four years on assignment in Silicon Valley.

This experience expanded his global perspective and sharpened his understanding of organizational culture and speed. After returning to Japan, he joined Salesforce and led HR operations for seven years.

In a fast-paced environment where team members handled 20–30 inquiries per day, he introduced data-driven process improvements, analyzed inquiry patterns, and hired people with strong customer-centric mindsets.

It was HR work at both scale and speed. Amid this hyper-growth environment, a question began to surface:

“How long can this growth continue? I want to understand organizational growth more deeply.”

This intellectual curiosity led him to pursue the Hitotsubashi ICS EMBA.

ICS as a Place Where Diversity Becomes Depth
When Yasu speaks about his EMBA experience, his voice carries a mix of challenge, learning, and fondness.

At ICS, he found himself among classmates of different ages, industries, and backgrounds—a community where diversity was not an exception, but the norm.

For Yasu, who had always been a minority in some way as a returnee, the program allowed him to reinterpret his background not as a constraint, but as a unique lens.

Through case discussions, team projects, and interactions with faculty, he realized that his natural “outside-in” perspective—shaped by international upbringing and cross-cultural work—was a powerful asset for understanding organizations.

ICS helped transform the many “dots” in his career into a deeper professional identity: HR as a field that integrates diversity, organizational insight, and strategic perspective.

A New Frontier: Leading Global HR at Astroscale

Today, Yasu leads global HR strategy at Astroscale, a pioneering space-debris removal startup with operations across Japan, the U.S., the U.K., and other regions.

His guiding keyword is “harmonization.”

Rather than enforcing uniform global standards, he works to respect local culture and regulations while aligning the organization toward a shared direction.

His decision-making emphasizes: Culture Fit and Position Fit

As a leader, he avoids micromanaging. Instead, he focuses on communicating vision repeatedly and consistently, adjusting the angle depending on the organization’s maturity.

“If the direction is shared, the method can differ. People can achieve great results in their own way.”

This philosophy cultivates autonomy within the team and positions Yasu as the “North Pole of HR”—a steady compass guiding the organization.

Turning Diversity into a Resource

Looking at Yasu’s career, a clear theme emerges:

His path was shaped less by deliberate long-term planning and more by chance encounters, unexpected assignments, and moments of realization.

What makes his journey remarkable is how he refused to treat those moments as mere accidents. Instead, he transformed each experience—whether challenging, marginalizing, or uncertain—into a source of strength, identity, and insight.

ICS’s EMBA became a critical junction in that process. It allowed him to harness diversity, deepen his expertise, and fortify his professional “core.”

In many ways, Yasu’s story embodies the essence of HR itself: understanding people, embracing differences, and guiding organizations forward in times of change.

Ayako Araki, MBA Class of 2024 Ayako is a 2-year MBA program student at Hitotsubashi ICS with over 10 years of experience as an organizational development professional in safety-critical environments. Her career in the nuclear energy sector has focused on safety culture, stakeholder engagement, and organizational alignment in complex, high-accountability settings. Through collaboration with international organizations such as the OECD/NEA and IAEA, she has developed a global perspective and strong cross-cultural collaboration skills. At ICS, she is deepening her expertise in organizational transformation, employee experience, and data-driven decision-making, with a strong interest in building psychologically safe, high-performing cultures that drive both business and societal value.