Michael Jonathan Green is senior vice president for Asia and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and director of Asian Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He served on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) from 2001 through 2005, first as director for Asian affairs with responsibility for Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, and then as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asia, with responsibility for East Asia and South Asia. Before joining the NSC staff, he was a senior fellow for East Asian security at the Council on Foreign Relations, director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center and the Foreign Policy Institute and assistant professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and senior adviser on Asia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He also worked in Japan on the staff of a member of the National Diet.

Dr. Green is also a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, a distinguished scholar at the Asia Pacific Institute in Tokyo, and professor by special appointment at Sophia University in Tokyo. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Strategy Group, the America Australia Leadership Dialogue, the advisory boards of Radio Free Asia and the Center for a New American Security, and the editorial boards of the Washington Quarterly and the Journal of Unification Studies in Korea. He also serves as a trustee at the Asia Foundation, senior adviser at the Asia Group, and associate of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Dr. Green has authored numerous books and articles on East Asian security, including most recently, By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 (Columbia University Press, 2017). He received his master’s and doctoral degrees from SAIS and did additional graduate and postgraduate research at Tokyo University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his bachelor’s degree in history from Kenyon College with highest honors. He holds a black belt in Iaido (sword) and has won international prizes on the great highland bagpipe.

Mireya Solís is director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies, and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Prior to her arrival at Brookings, Solís was a tenured associate professor at American University’s School of International Service.

Solís is an expert on Japanese foreign economic policy, U.S.-Japan relations, international trade policy, and Asia-Pacific economic integration. She is the author of "Banking on Multinationals: Public Credit and the Export of Japanese Sunset Industries" (Stanford University Press, 2004) and co-editor of "Cross-Regional Trade Agreements: Understanding Permeated Regionalism in East Asia" (Springer, 2008) and "Competitive Regionalism: FTA Diffusion in the Pacific Rim" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Her most recent book, “Dilemmas of a Trading Nation: Japan and the United States in the Evolving Asia-Pacific Order” (Brookings Press, 2017), offers a novel analysis of the complex tradeoffs Japan and the United States face in drafting trade policy that reconciles the goals of economic competitiveness, social legitimacy, and political viability. “Dilemmas of a Trading Nation” received the 2018 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Award.

Solís has offered expert commentary to The New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Politico, The New Yorker, Nikkei, Kyodo News, Asahi Shimbun, Jiji Press, Japan Times, NHK World, Bloomberg, CNN, and BBC, among others. Solís earned a doctorate in government and a master's in East Asian studies from Harvard University, and a bachelor's in international relations from El Colegio de México.

Joshua W. Walker, Ph.D., became President & CEO of Japan Society on December 2, 2019. Previously, he worked at Eurasia Group, the world's leading political risk analysis firm, where he served as global head of strategic initiatives and Japan in the Office of the President. He has actively expanded global events and new business offerings, including leading the company's first ever “GZERO” geopolitical summit in Japan. He has worked with clients worldwide with a focus on Japan and in a variety of sectors to evaluate global geopolitical risks.

Walker has more than two decades of experience in international business and diplomacy. Prior to Eurasia Group, he was CEO and president of the USA Pavilion of the 2017 World Expo in Astana, Kazakhstan; founding dean of the APCO Institute; and senior vice president of global programs at APCO Worldwide, a leading global strategic communications firm based in Washington, D.C. Before joining the private sector, he worked in numerous roles at various U.S. government agencies, including the State Department and the Defense Department. He is a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, and professor of Leadership and the American presidency at George Mason University and the Reagan Foundation.

He co-founded the Yale Journal of International Affairs and Young Professionals in Foreign Policy in New York along with being instrumental in the Project on Religion, Diplomacy, and International Relations at Princeton. He has taught at numerous academic institutions, served on a variety of boards and won various awards along with being a Presidential Leadership Scholar, Trilateral Commission Rockefeller Fellow, Mansfield Foundation Network for the Future Member, Munich Young Leader, Council on Foreign Relations Member, Fulbright Scholar, Foreign Policy Initiative Future Leader, Sister Cities International Honorary Board Member and Truman National Security Project Fellow. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Richmond, a master's degree from Yale University, and a doctorate from Princeton University.

Walker grew up in Japan where his parents still serve as missionaries, came to the United States when he was 18, and is bicultural and multilingual.

Noriyuki Shikata is Cabinet Secretary for Public Affairs under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, having been appointed to this post in October 2021. Most recently, he was Assistant Minister/Director General, Economic Affairs Bureau of Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA).

His other prior positions include: Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Japan in China; Deputy Director General, Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, MOFA; Political Minister, Embassy of Japan in the U.K.; Director of Global Communications, Prime Minister’s Office. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Law/Public Policy, and Associate, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University. He holds a B.A. in Law from Kyoto University and Master of Public Policy (MPP) from Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

His Twitter handle is: @norishikata.