Yoko Dochi is a Japanese businesswoman with over 35 years of experience working as a senior executive at some of Japan’s leading multinational companies.
She now serves on the board of Kirin Holdings Company, Rinnai Corporation and Nippo Ltd., bringing in her expertise in stakeholder communications, ESG and global organization management across three industries - automobile, technology and financial services – to her role as non-executive independent director.
Until 2023, Yoko was Managing Partner at SoftBank Group International in London and Managing Director at SoftBank Group Corp in Tokyo leading investor relations globally. Previously, from 2001 to 2018, Yoko was the EMEA head of investor relations for Toyota Motor Corporation. She held offices as General Manager of Global Treasury & Investor Relations at Toyota Motor Europe in London and as Principal Investor Relations Officer at the global headquarters in Toyota City.
Yoko started her career in investment banking, with 13 years at the World Bank in Washington D.C. and the Bank of Tokyo (now MUFJ Financial Group) in Tokyo. Thanks to a scholarship awarded by the Bank of Tokyo, she first came to the UK in 1990 to read for an MPhil in Management Studies at Magdalen College at the University of Oxford. Yoko originally graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1987 just as Japan’s Equal Employment Opportunity Law was enacted. Yet, she was one of the only five women hired on the graduate trainee programme along with 95 men (!). Unsurprisingly, Yoko has since championed gender diversity at corporate Japan both as an executive and in the board room.
Having dedicated two-thirds of her career to building trust between corporate Japan and the UK investment community, while raising her two half-Japanese half-English daughters in London (which she now calls her home), Yoko is passionate about promoting meaningful and long-lasting relations between the UK and Japan. She therefore enthusiastically serves as Trustee of The Japan Society, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and Magdalen College Development Trust and as Governor of the Ditchley Foundation in the UK. She also leads the ‘Women in Work’ initiative for The Japan Society.