Kenji Sugahara has lived on five different continents and seen that people’s similarities are often more important than their differences. His passion for building connections brought him to the MPA program at the BYU Marriott School of Business, where he hopes to gain the tools he needs to make an impact in international development.
Sugahara, who grew up in Osaka, Japan, had his first experience living abroad when he served as a missionary in Portugal, where he met many people from Angola and Mozambique. After his church mission, Sugahara returned to Japan, studied Portuguese and international relations, and completed a study abroad in Brazil. He then worked for three years in international development at the Japanese embassy and the Japan International Cooperation Agency in Angola, where he helped developing countries overcome social challenges, implemented project funding, and evaluated programs. While there, he deepened his understanding of the Angolan people and culture that he had come to know as a missionary.
Sugahara’s belief in the importance of building connections was later strengthened as he worked as an area humanitarian and education manager for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Welfare and Self-Reliance Services department. He learned that self-reliance is about connecting with and helping others when he managed self-reliance and education programs across Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Guam, Palau, and Micronesia. “When we hear the term self-reliance, we think it means being out of your parents’ house and being able to support yourself,” says Sugahara. “But Jesus teaches that when we are self-reliant, we can better serve and support others.”
Sugahara saw this principle in action when his department partnered with an association to help single parent families in Japan have access to food. “The leader of that organization told us that the families were not satisfied just receiving,” Sugahara says, rather, they wanted an opportunity to give back to the community. So Sugahara helped organize an opportunity for the families to clean up the Okinawan beaches. A large local aquarium caught wind of the service project and offered aquarium tickets to the families that participated. “When we were trying to do something good with two parties, a third party came and made the movement a little bigger.”
As he started to recognize the impact he could have, Sugahara wanted to further his own education—and opportunities to serve. He decided to pursue an MPA from BYU Marriott where he could take courses founded on the teachings of Jesus Christ. “I think that one of the most valuable lessons I could get from a BYU education is that Christ is trying to construct bridges between people and countries,” he says.
The amount of collaboration among MPA students surprised Sugahara when he first started the program. “I thought my courses would be competitive like the admission process,” says Sugahara, “but all of us—teachers, students, and staff—we help each other a lot.” He believes he continues to learn from his peers as they focus on “crossing the finish line together instead of trying to become the best of the cohort.”
He has seen this group mindset unite his family as well—especially as he and his children adapted to new schools. His sons struggled to make friends and understand the material in English when they first moved to the US, but Sugahara used this as an opportunity to connect with them. “I’m a student as well, so I was very open to sharing my grades with them, which were sometimes lower than their grades,” Sugahara says. “I think that created harmony and unity in my family.” Sugahara in turn is especially inspired by the positive attitude of his son, who worked to make new friends and is now a student council member.
Whether helping his sons at home, collaborating with his MPA cohort, or working on global international welfare programs, Sugahara has found joy in building bridges of connections. “While I was going to different countries and getting to know people,” Sugahara notes, “I realized that we are all children of God and that we have so many things in common.”
Sugahara wants to continue working in international development for the good of individuals, families, and society. “That’s one of the reasons I came to BYU Marriott for a master’s degree,” Sugahara says. “I want to be able to make a greater impact on others.”
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Written by Elizabeth Walker
