What is your name and job title?
Mayumi Yokomizo. Director, Partnerships GM, Japan
What is your story? How did you get to Kano?
Because most of my professional experience consisted of working for large corporations like Disney, the idea of working at a start-up had always intrigued me, especially for a company with a mission to make a difference in people’s lives.
The mission-driven side of my interest stemmed from my time at Sesame Workshop, the non-profit organization with a mission to help kids all over the world lead better lives. Knowing that our work contributed in a small way to help kids learn to be smarter, stronger, and kinder, brought the team closer together and work harder, and I craved that type of bond that united everyone to achieve a common goal. Luckily for me, I was hired as a partnerships manager to oversee the Disney and Harry Potter licensing business in August 2019.
Why are you at Kano?
What attracted me initially to Kano was the innovative line of products that were designed to demystify technology.
But more importantly, what has kept me at Kano is the people that I get to work with on a daily basis — my colleagues, who are some of the brightest and hardest working group of people I’ve ever worked with; our partners, who share a common goal of helping close the digital divide; the community of educators and parents, who work tirelessly to ensure that the students don’t get left behind in their education due to Covid-related school closures; and most importantly, the students, whose inquisitive minds and desire to learn fuel our passion to work harder.
Tell us one thing you do every day? Every week? And then every month? This could be anything in your life at all.
Every day, I catch up on the news over breakfast together without the need to rush to drive in LA traffic to the office.
Every week, I learn how to cook new dishes via our HelloFresh meal kits. I guess you can say that HelloFresh is the Kano of delicious meals — anyone can learn how to cook tasty dishes, not just consume!
At least a few times a month, I started playing the flute again, mostly classical pieces by Mozart and Telemann, but my all-time favorite is Cecile Chaminade’s Flute Concertino. The slower pace in life has restored my desire to pick up the flute once again, which I have not touched in many years. Yes, I was a band geek growing up who attended band camps, but I’ve also performed at the Lincoln Center in New York City and have been written up on NY Concert Review as a flutist with “a big, luscious tone.”
What does it take for someone to work at Kano? What skills do they need?
Skills can be taught, but what cannot be taught is the willingness to learn and work hard.
To work at Kano, it takes someone with a passion — whether it be for education, product design, engineering, customer experience, creative, manufacturing, finance, operations, sales, or marketing, they should be excited about making a difference in kids’ lives via technology.
