TEDxTokyo

Photographer, Author and Social Change Advocate

Nana Watanabe has a wide-angle lens on life. As a photographer, she has shot for iconic brands like Shiseido, Sony Music and Paris Vogue, and also exhibited extensively in Tokyo, New York, Paris, Shanghai and Berlin. In 2000, Nana began chronicling the lives of U.S. and European social entrepreneurs for Japanese audiences. Five years later, Keio University selected her book Changemakers: Social Entrepreneurs Are Changing the World as one of three texts for its “Social Innovation” graduate course̶ Japan’s first social entrepreneurship-related program.

Nana published a second book, “Changemakers II: Social Entrepreneurship as a Way of Life”, in 2007. She also advises a citizens group called Ashoka that supports social entrepreneurs and wants us all to become changemakers. As part of Ashoka-Japan’s Youth Venture Program, Nana’s team recently launched Youth Move Japan Forward to solicit ideas to improve post-crisis Japan from local youth and help them turn those ideas into constructive social enterprises.