Rika is a senior technology leader, VC investor, best-selling author, and frequent public speaker on technology-powered industry transformation. She is Chief Commercial Innovation with NTT, where she translates NTT Japan's investments in R&D and Innovation across Space/Satellite, Photonic networking, and Gen AI, to NTT's overseas operation companies - with a particular focus on sustainability innovation. For 2 consecutive years in 2022 and 2023, Rika has been awarded “Power 70” and “Power 80” recognition for the Women of Channel awards with The Channel Co’s CRN network. She has also been ranked as "Top 100  in Emerging Tech" by Women of the Future.

Trilingual in Japanese, German, and English, Rika grew up in Japan and moved to the US to attend Princeton University. Rika has since worked internationally in senior executive roles in strategy, business development, consulting, and marketing with Fortune 500 companies - NVIDIA, Accepture Capgemini, Sony - and Silicon Valley startups. She is a digital innovation veteran and has served on multiple boards in Next-Gen Computing and Climate Tech.  Rika is currently on the board of Venus Shell Systems, an Australian blue economy infrastructure enterprise.

Rika is the best-selling author of “Dear Chairwoman” - featuring the trials and triumphs of women corporate board leaders.  Her next book, featuring the intersection of sustainability, digital innovation, and the pandemic, is called “Beyond the Black Swan: How the Pandemic and Digital Innovation Intensified the Sustainability Imperative - Everywhere" and was just released by Taylor & Francis in January 2024.