About the Speakers

Sheila A. Smith is senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An expert on Japanese politics and foreign policy, she is the author of Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power, Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (released in Japanese as 日中 親愛なる宿敵: 変容する日本政治と対中政策), and Japan's New Politics and the U.S.-Japan Alliance. She is also the author of the CFR interactive guide Constitutional Change in Japan. Smith is a regular contributor to the CFR blog Asia Unbound and a frequent contributor to major media outlets in the United States and Asia. Smith joined CFR from the East-West Center in 2007, where she directed a multinational research team in a cross-national study of the domestic politics of the U.S. military presence in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. She was a visiting scholar at Keio University in 2007-08, where she researched Japan’s foreign policy towards China, supported by the Abe Fellowship. Smith has been a visiting researcher at two leading Japanese foreign and security policy think tanks, the Japan Institute of International Affairs and the Research Institute for Peace and Security, and at the University of Tokyo and the University of the Ryukyus. Smith is vice chair of the U.S. advisors to the U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON), a binational advisory panel of government officials and private-sector members. She also serves on the advisory committee for the U.S.-Japan Network for the Future program of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. She teaches as an adjunct professor at the Asian studies department of Georgetown University and serves on the board of its Journal of Asian Affairs. Smith earned her MA and PhD from the political science department at Columbia University.


Stephen Noerper is the Korea Society Senior Director for Policy and teaches graduate students on Northeast Asia and Korean Peninsula relations at Columbia University in both the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and Department of Political Science. He is a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute and a senior advisor to the United Nations program in support of cooperation in Northeast Asia. Previously, he was a senior fellow and director at the EastWest Institute, an associate professor of international relations at New York University, an adjunct professor at American University, and a visiting full professor to the National University of Mongolia--where he was a Fulbright senior scholar--and Waseda University. Dr. Noerper was an Intellibridge vice president, State Department senior analyst, and an associate and assistant professor at the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. He was an East-West Center visiting fellow and Washington representative for the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development. The author of more than seventy publications on US policy, Korea and Northeast Asia, he has appeared widely on radio and television, to include the BBC, Bloomberg, CBC, CNN, NHK, NPR and VOA and in The Wall Street Journal and other print. He holds advanced degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and London School of Economics. He is a member of the National Committee on North Korea, has received Mongolia’s State Friendship Medal and lectured across Korea, China, Russia and Japan, and has sat on several philanthropic boards.


Joshua W. Walker became President & CEO of Japan Society in December 2019. Previously, he worked at Eurasia Group, the world's leading political risk analysis firm, where he served as global head of strategic initiatives and Japan in the Office of the President. Prior to that, he was CEO and president of the USA Pavilion of the 2017 World Expo in Astana, Kazakhstan; founding dean of the APCO Institute; and senior vice president of global programs at APCO Worldwide, a leading global strategic communications firm based in Washington, D.C. Before joining the private sector, he worked in numerous roles at various U.S. government agencies, including the State Department and the Defense Department. He is Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, and professor of Leadership and the American presidency at George Mason University and the Reagan Foundation. He was also Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and co-founded the Yale Journal of International Affairs. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Richmond, a master's degree from Yale University, and a doctorate from Princeton University. Dr. Walker grew up in Japan where his parents still serve as missionaries, came to the United States when he was 18, and is bicultural and bilingual.