Business Karaoke Podcast with Brittany Arthur

Business born out of the challenges of motherhood with Kayo Tokumaru

• Season 1 • Episode 55

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In this episode we are joined by Kayo Tokumaru. Kayo-san is the founder of AndAssist, a Tokyo-based bilingual virtual assistant company. Like all inspirational businesses, the reason WHY they exist outshines WHAT they do to exist. It became quite clear to Kayo-san that there simply weren't enough hours in the day to invest in both an, at times rigid, corporate career and a new growing family. So she moved from the corporate world to started her own business to give both herself and other working mothers the flexibility the need to thrive in both work and life.

This episode is what we call in Design Thinking, the problem space of the double diamond. We are not yet in the solution space; we're simply trying to map the territory and understand the issue better before we jump into how we can solve it. Now we, as a society, are moving past the "working from home due to COVID restrictions" to rethinking, redesigning and reorganization new ways to collaborate, I am personally committed to investing more time and energy to creating conversations around work-life balance for working families. I hope you'll find some value in it.

Kayo-san shares with us the founding story of AndAssist, we explore  the historical image of a strong Japanese woman and learn about some memorable moments along Kayo-san entrepreneurial journey.

I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did!

💡 Key Conversations

00:45  |  AndAssist founding story
03:20  |  Working with working mothers and what actions can corporations take to support re-entry
07:40  |  The image of a strong Japanese female - Queen Himiko and the current underutilized female workforce. 
12:05  |  Changing traditions and 5 years from now
16:00  |  Standout AndAssist story

Here are some places for you to learn more about Kayo-san or AndAssist;
LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/kayo-tokumaru-239612187/
Website | https://andassist.jp