Announcement of the new outside Board of Directors.

Cinnamon announces that Mr. Makoto Takano, linkties Co., Ltd. Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes JAPAN, D4V(Design for Ventures) Founder and CEO, and Dr. Hiroaki Kitano, President & CEO at Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc., and a Senior Vice President at Sony Corporation, have become our new outside board of directors from June 28, 2019.

 

We strengthen our corporate governance with this new outside board of director announcement and continue to our services and drive new product development.

 

【Profiles of new directors】

 

Mr. Makoto Takano

 

Mr. Takano joined Daiwa Securities after receiving his master’s degree from Waseda University and later joined Daiwa Institute of Research where he was head of the strategist team. He was seconded to Daiwa Securities’ United States office in 1991 where he co-developed asset management models with Nobel Economics Prize Winner Harry Marcovitz. He joined Goldman Sachs Asset Management in 1997 and served as Head of Marketing as well as Operating Officer and Chief of Planning and Research before joining PIMCO Japan Ltd. in 2001. Mr. Takano served as President of PIMCO Japan for 13 years. In 2014, Mr. Takano moved on to the publishing industry and joined Atomixmedia Inc. (currently linkties Co., Ltd.) and serves as Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes JAPAN. He also co-founded D4V (Design for Ventures, a venture capital formed in partnership with IDEO) in 2016 and currently serves as its CEO. Mr. Takano serves on the board of a number of organizations, including GHV Accelerator, Endeavor Japan, Japan Venture Capital Association, UWC ISAK Japan, Asia Pacific Initiative, and Human Rights Watch. Mr. Takano has also published extensively on capital markets including his contribution to the Nikkei newspaper. In 1992, he was awarded Securities Analysts Journal Prize by the Securities Analyst Association of Japan. He holds master’sand undergraduate degrees in engineering from Waseda University.

 

Dr. Hiroaki Kitano

 

Hiroaki Kitano is a President & CEO at Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc., Tokyo, a Senior Vice President at Sony Corporation, Tokyo, a President at The Systems Biology Institute, Tokyo, and a Professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate
University, Okinawa.  He received a B.A. in physics from the International Christian University, Tokyo, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Kyoto University.
Since 1988, he has been a visiting researcher at the Center for Machine Translation at Carnegie Mellon University.  His research career includes a Project Director at Kitano Symbiotic Systems Project, ERATO, Japan Science and Technology Corporation followed by a Project Director at
Kitano Symbiotic Systems Project, ERATO-SORST, Japan Science and Technology Agency, a Group Director of Laboratory for Disease Systems Modeling at RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences, and so on.
He is also an Editor-in-Chief of npj Systems Biology and Applications, and a Founding Trustee of The RoboCup Federation.  Kitano received The Computers and Thought Award from the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence in 1993, Prix Ars Electronica 2000, Japan Design Culture Award 2001 and Nature’s 2009 Japan Mid-career Award for Creative Mentoring in Science, as well as being an invited artist for Biennale di Venezia 2000 and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York at Worksphere Exhibition in 2001.