Dr Saori Sugeno

Saori is Senior Lecturer in Finance and Corporate Governance at the University of Surrey, where she is Faculty Lead for Transnational Education and Director of Global Mobility at Surrey Business School. She builds the partnerships through which universities, academic communities and industry work together across borders.

A market economist before she moved into academia, Saori spent sixteen years with Daiwa Securities, covering ASEAN with a particular focus on Indonesia in Tokyo, and emerging markets in London, latterly as Senior Economist and Executive Director of Research. She was a Visiting Fellow at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, working on Russian structural reforms, and a consultant to Sumitomo Corporation covering Eastern Europe. She wrote a column on Russia for Nikkei, which led to two books published by Nikkei Publishing.

Saori's research focuses on stakeholder capitalism, comparative corporate governance and shareholder activism. She is the author of Stakeholder Capitalism and Corporate Governance in Japan (De Gruyter, 2025) and delivers sessions on leadership and executive education programmes at the Møller Institute, University of Cambridge. She holds a PhD in Economics from Chuo University, Tokyo, and is a native Russian speaker, fluent in Japanese.