Miyo Yamashita appointed Schwartz Reisman Director, Strategy and Operations
Former Deloitte managing partner, entrepreneur, and leader from the tech start-up community Miyo Yamashita has been appointed Director, Strategy and Operations at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.
As the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society enters its next phase of growth, Dr. Miyo Yamashita has been appointed its new Director of Strategy and Operations. Yamashita is well known in corporate Canada, having held various leadership roles in healthcare, banking, as well as consulting, where she served as the Managing Partner, Talent & Workplace and the first Chief Transformation Officer at Deloitte Canada and a Director on Deloitte’s global board. More recently, Yamashita served as the Chief Strategy Officer for a 100-person AI company based in Ottawa. In 2017, she was recognized as one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in the RBC Champions category.
“With her combined background leading large transformations across multiple industries and her familiarity with AI start-ups, we are very excited for Miyo to be joining our leadership team, where she will play a pivotal role accelerating our next phase of development” says Schwartz Reisman Director Gillian Hadfield.
Yamashita first earned a PhD in communications 20 years ago at McGill University, studying the impact of new communications technologies on human rights, including privacy, dignity, and fairness. Her doctoral work formed the basis for her own consulting company as rapid developments in technology combined with new compliance requirements around organizations’ growing data stores accelerated the need for specialized advice for business leaders in the early 2000s. In 2010, Yamashita sold her consulting company to Deloitte, Canada’s (and the world’s) largest independent consulting firm.
Today, Yamashita is delighted to “return home” to a university setting that brings together a broad range of perspectives to advance how we should think about innovation to benefit all of humanity, housed within a globally significant institute that will enable Toronto—and Canada—to be a force for good as new developments in AI outpace many of our current legal, social, and political mechanisms to respond to the present age.
“Supporting the development of effective practices that enhance trust and avoid negative outcomes in the development and deployment of AI models is an urgent responsibility for today’s leaders across every major sector of the economy and in almost every area of an organization, not just Chief Technology Officers or those with backgrounds in technology,” believes Yamashita.
Yamashita will work closely with the Institute’s Research Leads to accelerate Schwartz Reisman’s integration of world-class research across sectors and disciplines, deepening our understanding of how powerful tools like AI can serve the common good and deliver a more just and inclusive world. She will also work closely with the newly appointed Schwartz Reisman Engineering Lead and Chief Technology Officer for the Vector Institute, Ron Bodkin and Senior Advisor for Policy, Strategy and Solutions Jamison Steeve to build collaborative projects that move responsible AI in industry from the realm of ethical guidelines to practical implementations.
Yamashita received her BA in English from the University of Manitoba in 1991 and obtained an MA and PhD in communications from McGill University in 1993 and 1998, respectively.
