Staff Profile

• Gender equality
• Impact Investing and Gender Lens Investing
• Elimination of child labor
• Migrant workers' rights

After graduating from university, she joined the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) and was assigned to the Matsue bureau in Shimane prefecture as a TV program director（PD）. As the only female director of a local station, she was thinking about gender norms on a daily basis when news of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing Conference) sparked her interest in women's empowerment. After leaving the station, she studied at a graduate school in the United States. She then joined the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to work on women's empowerment in developing countries, supporting rural development, women's economic empowerment, and empowerment of the vulnerable in UNDP Bangladesh. She then worked for the International Labour Organization (ILO) at Headquarters and in the Bureau of Asia and the Pacific where she worked in the International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC). In 2007, she received an award from the Cambodian government for her contribution through the project on the elimination of child domestic labour. After a break, Ayaka joined JICA and led an award-winning project on building capacity for victims of trafficking in person as a JICA expert in Thailand.  Ayaka joined SPF in 2019 and she is currently working on the implementation of projects to promote economic empowerment of women in Asia, and leading a 100-million dollar initiative called Asia Women Impact Fund.