Introducing: James Huffman
Last month, The Nippon Foundation underwent its annual personnel rotation.
This kind of regular rotation is common in Japan, especially at the bureaucratic level, and for employees it is meant to both stimulate a broader understanding of the institution, and to reduce the boredom and complacency that often comes with long-term positions. This year, the entire TNFSA team underwent this process, and so from today, we will be running a series of short articles introducing our new members.
The first person that we would like to introduce will be the point-man for most of you who want to contact the foundation: James Huffman.
James has been with The Nippon Foundation for more than twenty years, as its sole Western permanent employee. In the first years of his tenure, James worked in the public relations department as webmaster and writer for the English and Japanese websites, editor for its magazine ads, and as content coordinator for the Foundation’s Astrovision screen.
Following that, he worked as a program officer on projects related to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, international networking projects such as the Salzburg Global Seminar-Japan initiative, and a wide variety of scholarship programs, including the creation of the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation’s studentship program.
Most recently he was a program director with the International Projects Department, where he managed the Foundation’s efforts in Central and Southeast Asia.
On the personal side, James has always spent his free time writing fiction and reading, but over the course of the pandemic has developed strange fascinations with both quantum physics and F1 racing, neither of which he can claim to understand very well.
From James--
"Frankly, I am thrilled to be a part of this TNFSA initiative, both because it will enable me to get back into contact with many of you, and because it is exciting to search for new ways to activate the unrealized potential of this global group. I am really looking forward to working with all of you in the months and years to come."