BOARD MEMBERS

(Ex Officio Board Member)
Executive Director, U.S.-Japan Bridging Foundation

Dr. Tom Mason became the first full-time executive director of the U.S.-Japan Bridging Foundation in 2020. A social entrepreneur and specialist in study abroad and Chinese and Japanese language pedagogy, Dr. Mason brings extensive experience to the Bridging Foundation. Prior to this role, he founded and served for eighteen years as the executive director of the ALLEX Foundation (Alliance for Language Learning and Educational Exchange), dedicated to establishing and expanding Japanese language departments at U.S. universities and transforming lives through study abroad.

Dr. Mason has held leadership and teaching roles with Columbia University’s Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies, Cornell University, and several Japanese institutions. He studied at National Taiwan University on a Taiwanese government fellowship and was selected as a Mansfield Foundation Fellow in 2022 for the U.S.-Japan Network for the Future Program.

In August 2024, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan announced that the Government of Japan would honor Dr. Mason with the Foreign Minister’s Commendation (外務大臣表彰) in recognition of his contributions to strengthening U.S.-Japan relations and promoting the Japanese language. A passionate mentor and frequent speaker on social entrepreneurship and international education, Dr. Mason holds a B.A. and M.A. in Asian Studies from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages from The Ohio State University, where he studied with Mari Noda, the field’s preeminent scholar of Japanese language pedagogy.