Japan-America Society of Washington (Non-profit)

Program Coordinator, Small Business Resiliency Network · Mercer Island, WA ・April 2026 – Present

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I coordinate services for Japanese immigrant and Japanese American small business owners through a Washington State Department of Commerce program, funded through grants from the Department of Commerce, the Department of Labor & Industries, and the Washington State Microenterprise Association.

 

Most of my work is content: deciding what these business owners need to know, then designing and writing it so they can understand it and act on it.

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WRITING

I write a weekly bilingual series, 知っ得情報 / “Did You Know?”, covering labor law, tax changes, and compliance requirements. I start with material from weekly SBA technical assistance briefings, filter it for what actually matters to a Japanese-speaking restaurant owner, salon operator, or other small business owner in Washington, and turn it into practical guidance.

 

Every piece is published in English and Japanese, with the same terminology, meaning, and voice across both languages.

 

I also write the monthly program report for the Department of Commerce, combining performance data with client success stories, and authored the published recap of our Japan Fair 2026 participation.

 

RENAMING A PROGRAM

The organization offered one-on-one business consultations under the name “Workshop.” The label created the wrong expectation before anyone arrived. I renamed the program to describe what it actually was and rewrote the description accordingly. A small change, but the words were doing the wrong work.

 

REBUILDING THE CONTENT PIPELINE

Our L&I grant-funded content requires state agency approval before publication. The team knew approvals could take up to six weeks, but there was no schedule built around that — each deliverable was handled ad hoc as it came due.

 

At a weekly check-in, I asked whether we could submit drafts before the quarter started. The answer was yes; nobody had asked. I built a six-month schedule working backward from quarterly deadlines, and I track every submission through the approval chain: submitted, under review, edits returned, revised, approved, published.

 

Q3 content is approved and published, Q4 is in review, and actual review cycles are running two to four weeks. The team can now plan against measured turnaround rather than a six-week worst-case assumption.

 

MOVING THE PROGRAM TO ITS AUDIENCE

Attendance at our presentation series was chronically low. Each grant deliverable requires a minimum of fifteen attendees, making low turnout a compliance risk as well as an outreach problem.

 

The previous approach relied primarily on personal recruitment.

 

At Japan Fair 2026, I ran a survey asking business owners where they wanted these programs held. More than 200 people responded, with a clear preference for the Eastside and Bellevue as the most requested location.

 

I researched three alternative venues, visited them, and found that Bellevue City Hall offers conference space to nonprofits at no cost. I presented the findings to program leadership, and the presentation series moved. The September presentation is now booked.

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SYSTEMS AND OPERATIONS

During the organization's migration from Wild Apricot to Neon One, I rebuilt the registration and ticketing flows for our consultation programs and published the consultation series to the website event calendar. Previously, the programs were promoted only through social media and the newsletter.

 

I also built the team's six-month master schedule, tracking four funding streams, quarterly deliverables, external review status, and event milestones at daily resolution.​​