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Kumi Sato (佐藤玖美) is the president and CEO of Cosmo Public Relations Corporation, an independent Japanese strategic business communications and marketing consulting firm. She is the first Japanese to be named "Agency Head of the Year" in the Asia-Pacific region by the trade magazine PRWeek.

Early career
Sato worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company in New York from 1981 to 1983. Later, she founded and headed Cosmo International, a consulting firm based in New York and Arlington, Virginia, that specialized in assisting small- to medium-sized Japanese companies enter the U.S. market.

In 1999, Sato also founded one of Japan's first websites for women, womenjapan.com, dedicated to empowering women in Japan. The company was later sold in October 2001.

Cosmo Public Relations Corporation
In 1987, at age 27, Sato bought Cosmo, a public relations company founded by her parents in 1960. Over the years, Sato transformed the company into a strategic communications consulting firm, diversifying its primarily Japanese client base into a majority of multinational companies. Today, Cosmo specializes in healthcare and food and food science clients.

Over the years, Cosmo has received numerous industry awards. It was named "Consultancy of the Year" in 2002 by PRWeek Asia-Pacific, becoming the only Japanese-based firm at the time to win the award. In 2011, COSMO was again recognized as "Japan Consultancy of the Year" by the Holmes Report, which profiles over 400 leading public relations firms each year. Most recently, COSMO was named "Japan/Korea Independent Agency of the Year" at the 2012 Campaign Asia-Pacific Agency of the Year Awards.

Books
In 2007, Sato published a book called Aisareru Kaisha no Joken ("How to Become a Popular Company"), which explored and compared views on corporate social responsibility among Japanese and American companies.

In October 2012, Sato released her second book, Communication Leadership, which examines what strategic communications is and how to use it most effectively, using a range of case studies.

Honors
Sato has been recognized numerous times as an industry leader over the years. She was named one of Bloomberg BusinessWeek's "Stars of Asia" in 2000 and was one of The Star Group's "50 Leading Women Entrepreneurs of the World."

In 2010, she became the first Japanese to be named the Asia-Pacific "Agency Heard of the Year" by Campaign, a major trade publication, at the prestigious PR Week Awards in Hong Kong.

She received two recognitions in 2011: the "Prospect Gold Standard Award for Professional Excellence" at the Gold Standard Awards 2011, which is given to outstanding communication professionals recognized as leaders among their peer groups and the wider corporate affairs industry; and "Outstanding Individual Achievement" at the 2011 Asia-Pacific SABRE Awards.

Most recently, Sato was awarded Harvard Business School Club of Japan's "Stateswoman of the Year 2012." .

Other activities
Sato is an active member of several committees and boards in Japan. She served as Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ) from 2011-2012, and is currently the Vice-Chair of the ACCJ's Labor Diversification Task Force.

From 2005 to 2010, Sato served as a professor in the Department of Management at Kenichi Ohmae Graduate School of Business, where she taught about corporate branding and corporate social responsibility. She is also the co-chair of the Global Council for Asia Society.

Education and personal life
Sato was born and raised in Japan, where she attended Nishimachi International School in Minato, Tokyo. She graduated from Wellesley College and earned a B.A. in East Asian Studies.

She is married to Donald P. Kanak and has three children.