BULLETIN | SPRING 2015 41
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Last December, Headmaster Alex D. Curtis announced a new multi-year admission initiative involving Japan. Thanks to the foresight and generosity of Takashi Murata ’93, a Tokyo-based alumnus, the School is introducing a scholarship program specifically earmarked for Japanese students. The Murata US-Japan Scholars Program consists of grants for talented Japanese students to study at Choate for both summer school and the academic year. The first Murata US-Japan Scholar will attend Summer Programs this June. BULLETIN: A three-year student, you came to Choate
from Scarsdale High School and enrolled in our Summer Programs in 1990. As a ninth grader in Scarsdale, you attended a Japanese school every day after the school day ended and considered, at one point, returning to Japan for high school. What made you decide to come to Choate? TAKASHI MURATA: My parents wanted me to go back to Japan for high school, so every day after I finished my classes at Scarsdale High I had to go to a cram school to study for the entrance exams. I had a strong desire to stay in the U. S., and pushed back hard. My parents budged at the end and allowed me to stay here. My father learned about Choate through a business contact who was an alumnus. The Choate admission office told me I had to prove myself in the summer program. Fortunately I was able to do so with B/B+ grades, but it did not come easy for me. On one occasion, I remember calling home in tears thinking I was not going to make it. B: English teacher Doug James noted that as a student you were a “resourceful scholar with an engaging style and mind.” What classes had the most impact on you at Choate? TM: The humanities classes, history and English. Oddly, I was much better at math, science, and problem-solving. Thinking back, I feel the small class settings and my attempts to engage in class discussions had a big impact on me. I am not that talkative by nature so it took some getting used to, but that struggle definitely had a lasting impact.
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TAKASHI MURATA ’93 with
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B: You were a varsity wrestler at Choate and member of the 1992-93 Founders League Championship team. Your wrestling coach, Jay Hutchinson, said, “Nobody works harder than Tak.” You were also elected as a house prefect in McBee. How did those early leadership opportunities prepare you for later management positions in the business world? TM: I still remember Coach Hutch talking to the team about how he loved wrestling because on any given day anyone could beat an opponent who is much better. He talked about how 90 percent of winning is attitude and all of the rest – physical attributes, technique – was 10 percent. That frame of mind is something that I have carried with me since. By the way, I still keep up with grappling through Brazilian jiu-jitsu, but I must say it gets harder every year. As for being a prefect, I remember wondering how I would compare with my sophomore year prefects. Pretty quickly, I realized I couldn’t be like them. I had nowhere near the cool factor that they did. You just realize you need to be yourself and do the best you can. That’s true of anything I have done so far. More recently, in 2011, I took over as the head of my group in Japan and later built our Australia business. I learned to embrace my own leadership style as opposed to being too conscious of what my predecessors did. B: After Choate you majored in economics at Penn. Did you head straight to Goldman Sachs right after that? TM: No. My first job was with Secured Capital Corp., a real estate advisory firm in L.A. Then I moved to Japan. After the move, by chance I met a Goldman partner who was setting up a new business there, and I was offered a job. It happened so quickly, I remember thinking how hard it was as a college student to even get a final-round interview with a bulge bracket investment bank. B: At Goldman Sachs, you have had meteoric success. You were named a managing director in 2005, and just three years later, in 2008, you became a partner. Membership in the partnership pool is one of Goldman’s highest honors. As a Choate student you said that “tolerance and self-awareness” were the most important personal attributes. Do you find that is still true?
TM: I was lucky to be able to ride the wave of a new business within Goldman at an early stage in my career. I have been with the firm’s principal investing and lending group for 17 years. I joined at the inception of the group, and it was at a time when all Japanese banks had to massively clean up their balance sheets. There were a lot of opportunities to invest. Riding a wave of a new business platform is something my real estate professor at Wharton stressed as a key factor in elevating your career quickly. I like to say it was by design, but obviously there was a lot of luck involved. As for “tolerance and self-awareness” being important attributes, yes I absolutely think this is still true. It takes tolerance to create an open environment and it takes self-awareness to adjust and maintain that environment. It is imperative to embrace different views and people of different experiences and backgrounds. B: Students from overseas have long been drawn to Choate. In a year when we are marking our 125 year history as a school, it is interesting to note that in 1908, the class valedictorian at The Choate School was Nobuyo Masuda, who was from Japan. What is your hope for the Murata US-Japan Scholars Program, and what do you hope it will achieve for global education? TM: Wouldn’t it be great to have another Japanese valedictorian in the near future? My hope is that by taking the financial burden out of the equation, the program will allow more top-notch students in Japan to now consider U.S. boarding schools as a real option, and help create a bigger trend of Japanese students studying overseas at an earlier stage. Japan has been known as somewhat of a reclusive place and probably more so after two decades of economic deflation. Multicultural, multilingual Japanese talent is in short supply. I feel this in my job, and this is very concerning to me. However more recently the domestic and international trend is forcing many people in Japan to broaden their horizons and to think more globally again. Declining demographics is making overseas expansion an imperative for corporations. I hope this program comes at a right time and will benefit both Choate and Japan.