84: Tomo Hasegawa, President, Japan at Medline Industries

<p>Tomo Hasegawa is a second-generation Japanese-American with extensive leadership experience in the global medical and pharmaceutical industry. After he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an Electrical Engineering degree, Mr. Hasegawa joined Hewlett Packard (HP) as a Project Manager and Engineer where he helped design ultrasound devices that HP was creating at the time. When HP was struggling to survive the competitive market in Japan, Mr. Hasegawa was assigned from the US to work for HP Japan Medical (later became Agilent) to help turn around the business. He was originally hired to assist with marketing and sales of roughly 50+ people. Eventually, Agilent was acquired by Phillips and Mr. Hasegawa became the General Manager of the cardiac ultrasound business in Japan. After three years, Mr. Hasegawa was headhunted by Sonosite Japan, a company specializing in portable ultrasound devices. Mr. Hasegawa then began working at Sandoz Japan, a multi-national pharmaceutical company, and most recently, joined Medline Industries Japan office as their president.</p> <p> </p> <p>Mr. Hasegawa says HP’s people-centric approach in business was what made the company so successful, and he has taken on this leadership approach throughout his career. He explains: “[As leaders] we were told to just do two things...first, set the direction and second, get things out of the way for your people.” During the early 2000s, a rival company had headhunted many of the leadership staff from HP, which caused many challenges. Mr. Hasegawa initially struggled with the challenge of leading an organization with a strong competitor, on top of the fact that he had no experience in doing business in Japan in Japanese. Yet he eventually came to realize that the customers care much more about the product and wanted to hear about the technical details, which Mr. Hasegawa as an engineer had thorough knowledge of. Within his team, Mr. Hasegawa’s knowledge and active listening skills helped him build trust and credibility.</p>