Hideki Yamawaki

Hideki Yamawaki is the Ito Chair of International Business and Professor of Management at the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management in Claremont Graduate University. He served as associate dean from 2006 to 2009, and as academic dean from 2010 to 2012.

Born in Tokyo, Yamawaki lived in (West) Berlin and Brussels before moving to Los Angeles. He was a research fellow at Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung Berlin in Germany from 1982 to 1990, then taught as an associate professor of economics at Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium from 1990 to 1997. From 1995 to 1999, he held a visiting professorship at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA.
He served as co-executive director of the Innovation Systems Design (ISD) program, a joint degree with ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena launched in 2011. The ISD program combines the ArtCenter’s renowned design and innovation curriculum with the Drucker School’s acclaimed management acumen.

Building on his international experience and design strategy, Yamawaki helped design and launch Finding the Future in Food (FFF) in December 2024. In this experiential program, participants uncover new trends and spot the seeds of emerging ones. Moreover, they find innovative business opportunities in a multicultural setting—all through Los Angeles’s vibrant food scene. Through field trips and hands-on study, participants gain actionable insights into California’s culture, diversity, and demographic changes.

In addition to developing new experiential programs like ISD and FFF, Yamawaki has taught MBA and Executive courses at the Drucker School. These include Competitive Strategy, Global Strategy, Managing Across Borders, Design Thinking, Designing the Future, and Global Immersion. He holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard University.