FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 9, 2018
MEDIA CONTACT
Christina Burchette
cburchette@sistercities.org
202.347.4876
SISTER CITIES INTERNATIONAL ELECTS SHIN KOYAMADA TO THE NATIONAL BOARD OF DIRECTORS
WASHINGTON, DC (August 9, 2018) – Sister Cities International (SCI) elected Shin Koyamada (小山田 真), Actor, Producer and Philanthropist of Los Angeles, California to the Board of Directors on August 3, 2018 at the 2018 Annual Conference in Aurora, Colorado. Koyamada was voted in by SCI’s individual member sister cities, counties, and states from all over the country.
“We are deeply honored to have Shin Koyamada join the Board of Directors and the Sister Cities International leadership team,” said Ron Nirenberg, Chairman of the SCI Board of Directors and Mayor of San Antonio, Texas. “His passion and contribution as a world citizen diplomat are inspiring and will help the organization to highlight the critical importance of the role of the everyday citizen in promoting world peace.”
Koyamada is the first native-born Japanese member of Sister Cities International’s Board of Directors, and also serves as the Country and Regional Representative for Japan and East Asia. He is originally from Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture, Japan and immigrated to the United States in June of 2000. In 2004, Koyamada became best known to global audiences after his co-starring roles in the Warner Bros. blockbuster Tom Cruise film The Last Samurai, with a worldwide box office of $456 million. He starred in the Disney Channel hit TV movie Wendy Wu Homecoming Warrior, making it one of the highest viewed Disney Channel movies in the U.S and the highest rated kid’s channel in Europe, U.K. and Japan. He is Co-Founder and Chairman of KIF (Koyamada International Foundation) and Shinca Group CEO. He has dedicated a large portion of his life to philanthropic work that focuses on promoting the role and importance of citizen diplomacy, especially in empowering global youth and women and strengthening and deepening the ties between Japan, East Asia, and the United States. For more information about him, please visit http://ShinKoyamada.com.
Koyamada first become involved with Sister Cities International when he participated in the 60th San Jose-Okayama Sister Cities Anniversary in San Jose, California to support his hometown of Okayama, Japan. In July 2017, he was appointed to the SCI Board of Directors as the Young Professional Representative, and then elected as Director-at-Large this year. For Koyamada, the highlight of the 2018 Annual Conference was receiving the Chairman’s Award before hundreds of sister cities members for his tremendous contributions and achievements he made in the past year as a board member, including two international trips to Japan with two different U.S. delegations, nine separate domestic sister cities trips across the U.S., creating SCI Youth national branding, bringing in a major corporate sponsor, and more.
After his election, Koyamada stated, “I am sincerely honored to be elected to the Director-at-Large position by the Sister Cities International network, and I am looking forward to continuing my work with Sister Cities International to bridge global communities for world peace.”
