Environmental Journalist
Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive, Japan for Sustainability (JFS)
Founder and President, e's Inc.
Co-Founder and Chairperson, Change Agent, Inc.
Visiting researcher, Research into Artifacts, the Center for Engineering (RACE) at the University of Tokyo
Member of International Sustainability Innovation Council of Switzerland(ISIS).
Translator

Junko Edahiro was born in 1962 in Kyoto, Japan. She received a Bachelor's degree in Education and a Master's degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Tokyo.

At the age of 29 years old she set her goal to become a simultaneous interpreter, and started learning English from scratch. Within a few years, she transformed herself into a simultaneous interpreter and a translator from otherwise deemed as an "ordinary housewife." Later, she published a book titled Anything Is Possible If You Wake Up at 2 A.M. and wrote her own stories about this transformation. It became a national best seller and is very popular among those ordinary people with hidden aspirations.

In 1993 she was inspired to work in the environmental arena after her encounter with Lester R. Brown, then-President of the World Watch Institute and a renowned thinker and writer on environmental and global issues. As an interpreter and translator, she has interpreted at many international meetings, lectures, and seminars on the environmental subjects and has translated several books on the environment and sustainability, including Revolution for Eco Economy by Lester Brown, Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update by Donnela Meadows, et al., and Believing in Casandra by Alan Atkisson.

As she has built the more experiences in the environmental field, she became an environmental journalist and has started writing and speaking with her own ideas and words. In 1998 she started a list serve which passes on information on the state of the global environment and initiatives of sustainability development worldwide, which attracts over 7,500 subscribers from government, industrial and civil sectors. She has written several books, including How to Fix the Earth published in 2005 and intended for business people and policy makers. She also has delivered hundreds of lectures and speeches on the environment, sustainability, corporate social responsibility and corporate communication. She is regularly on TV and Radio shows on topics of the environment.

She also invites prominent opinion leaders from the U.S. and Europe, and presides several networking events, which attracts hundreds of business people, policy makers, researchers, and concerned citizens. With these activities, she is deemed as an icon figure of networking across different sectors.

In 2002, along with other collaborators, she founded Japan for Sustainability (JFS), a non-profit environmental communication platform, which provides information on Japan's activities promoting sustainability on the website (www.japanfs.org) and publishes weekly digests and monthly newsletters to over 7,000 subscribers in 179 countries.
She is also an initiator of the Candle Night campaign (www.candle-night.org), in which over five millions of people join to turn lights off in the night of the summer and winter solstices to think about the environment and peace.

From 2003 to 2005, she founded three companies, all related to sustainability in one way or the other. e's Inc. sells eco-products and supports those who would like to transform themselves. Eco Networks, Inc. provides translation and consulting services and help Japanese corporations to conduct effective communication on sustainability and CSR. The other company is named Change Agent, Inc. (www.change-agent.jp), and it provides consulting and education services, with tools such as visioning, systems thinking, communication and management systems.

She has been chosen as a most successful career woman by Nikkei Career Women magazine in 2003. She has been selected as one of the "100 Planet Earth Lovers" at the World Expo 2005 held in Aichi, Japan.