Yasuhiko Kozuka

Co-Founder / Co-CEO

After leaving the MPhil in Innovation Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art, Koz co-founded Morph in London with Kieran Holland. Working on transcreation briefs with a range of global companies, Koz and Kieran devised their own methods, including 'narrative thinking', 'meaning design' and 'empathy language'. Before moving to the UK, Koz worked for Hakuhodo for nine years as a copywriter, art director and researcher at the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living. He has long practised Noh in the Kanze school and poetry in the Reizei school, and values his cultural perspective from ancient and medieval Japan combined with a contemporary global perspective. He lives and works in Kyoto.

Kieran Holland

Co-Founder / Co-CEO

After graduating from York University with a degree in English and Linguistic Science, Kieran moved to Tokyo. He spent seven years in Japan working variously as an English writing instructor at Sophia University, and as a translator and researcher. In 2017, he co-founded Morph in London with Yasuhiko Kozuka. He has been involved in research and development of the Soyaku™ method from a linguistic perspective while conducting transcreation work for global companies. He holds a JLPT Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level 1. He currently lives and works in London.

Akimitsu Kuwabara

Transcreator

Aki was raised and educated in Japan and the United States. After graduating from Cornell University, he began his career at the Public Policy Institute, before working in consumer research at Flamingo, a global brand consultancy. Since 2021, he has mainly been involved in writing consumer lifestyle reports and localization projects related to advertising, marketing, and branding. He enjoys listening to music and watching sports, and has contributed articles to sports-related media as an extension of these passions.

Bonnie Wang

Transcreator

Born and raised in Shanghai. Bonnie studied business at the University of Hong Kong, and then went on to earn two master's degrees: one in international strategy from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and the other in visual sociology from Goldsmiths University, UK. She started her career at P&G in Germany, in consumer and market research. She then worked for seven years at an agency responsible for the localization of various brands expanding their operations outside of their home country. She has lived in many Asian and European cities and is currently based across London and Shanghai.

Elizabeth Smith

Transcreator

After graduating from the University of Chicago, Elizabeth moved to Japan to explore her family roots, and worked as a researcher and translator. She is currently pursuing a master's degree at Tufts University's Fletcher School, focusing primarily on gender theory and intersectionality. Prior to grad school, she spent a year in Seoul on a Fulbright Scholarship. Outside of work, she has a long background in classical ballet and has also studied Japanese dance, challenging herself to explore new styles. She lives in Boston.

Kai Wasson

Transcreator

Kai received his M.A. in East Asian Linguistics and Cultural Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received a scholarship from the Nippon Foundation to study at the United States-Canada Joint Center for Japanese Studies, an advanced Japanese language institute run by Stanford University and dedicated to Japanese studies scholars. He has many years of experience in academic translation and holds the highest level of the JLPT Japanese Language Proficiency Test (Level 1). He lives in Tokyo.

Kei Suganuma

Transcreator

Raised in England, Kei studied experimental psychology at the University of Oxford. After graduation, she obtained a Performance Science Certificate (PGCert) from the Royal College of Music. After working in language education, she began providing language services in Japanese-English translation and proofreading. She enjoys playing the piano and learning Korean. She currently lives in London.

Maya LeBeau

Transcreator

Born and raised in the United States, Maya is trilingual in English, Japanese, and French. She studied filmmaking and creative writing at New York University, graduating in 2016. In New York, she was involved in advertising and media production and moved to Japan in 2019. In Tokyo, she works in global advertising and entertainment, as an interpreter, translator, copywriter, interviewer, and in cross-cultural communication support. She works with a focus on inclusivity and divergent perspectives, utilising the sensibilities she has developed from her Japanese and U.S. cultural background. She lives in Tokyo, Japan.

https://mayalebeau.com

Moe Nakahara

Transcreator

Moe was born and raised in New York City. After graduating from Akita International University, she worked as an intern at the video production company Toboggan before becoming an independent freelance translator and interpreter in 2018. She specializes in the fields of advertising, branding, and video production, and in addition to translation and interpretation, she provides support for all kinds of communication that transcends language and culture. She is interested in sustainable living design and is practicing natural farming and permaculture in her private life, and founded the joint venture empalette in 2023.

Mirae Yoon

Transcreator

Mirae is multilingual, fluent in Korean, Japanese and English. She attended the University of Tokyo's College of Liberal Arts, specializing in linguistics and philosophy. During her university years, she studied at the prestigious Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany, focusing on UX Design and HCI (Human-Computer Interaction). After graduation, she specialized in design thinking and was in charge of planning apps for toC at an IT company, and gained user research experience at Flamingo, a global brand consultancy. She lives in Seoul.

Roy Lee

Transcreator

Born in Silicon Valley and raised in China and the U.S., Roy is a second generation Chinese-American who is trilingual in Japanese, Chinese and English. He majored in International Relations and Sociology of Education at Akita International University and ran a student organization on Japan-U.S. relations while in school. After graduation, he worked as a teacher at a private integrated junior high and high school for boys, and also engaged in various activities such as conference interpretation and translation, workshop design and facilitation for companies. With insight into Japanese, Chinese, and English-speaking cultures, he provides advice on how to make the most of diverse human resources and how to expand overseas. He is a member of the 11th Nakagawa Conference of Foreign Residents of Japan and has been selected as a Global Shaper of the Global Shapers Community by the World Economic Forum since 2021.

Yuki Ishimaru

Transcreator

After graduating from high school in Houston, Texas, Yuki moved to Japan with the feeling of studying abroad, and entered the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo. After graduation, she started her own business as a freelance conference interpreter and translator. Her areas of expertise include entertainment (movies, stage, games, etc.), IT in general, and aerospace. Major works include "The Last Samurai," "Letters from Iwo Jima," "Silence," and many more.

Shika Haku

Transcreator

Upon completion of her undergraduate degree in Integrated Natural Sciences from the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo, she pursued further specialization in Cognitive Psychology through the university's graduate school. Her professional tenure of over three years at Dentsu saw her playing a pivotal role in global branding initiatives for leading Japanese corporations across a spectrum of sectors such as beverages, food, retail, finance, and B2B. She is currently based in London, where she is advancing her academic pursuits through a second graduate program at the Royal College of Art, focusing on Information Experience Design. Her ambition is to amalgamate the disciplines of art and science, aiming to innovate new perspectives on world observation.

Motoko Sugita

Project manager

Responsible for the back office at Morph since the consultancy began. An avid dancer, her two favourite dance styles are hip hop and jazz. When not dancing, she loves wine.