Kori Kanayama

Kori Kanayama specializes in strategic and business planning with focus on building client capacity for organizational effectiveness. Her primary services are delivered through collective engagement. She’s also frequently called upon to facilitate board and staff meetings and retreats.

Kori switches the frame through which we view situations, people, and ourselves. She imbues organizational process with the recognition that people want to be trusted and valued for who they are.  Her approach engages the whole system to pay close attention to interconnectedness. Her work increases the success for organizations and their leaders.

Kori’s rigorous methodology, high ethical standards and collaborative orientation combine to support a uniquely effective consulting practice with clients and communities. Kori speaks truth to power, and finds joy in the mission to build social equity by creating deep internal engagement within organizations and individuals. She challenges clients to stretch their limits and discover transformative power. She invites you to join her on an exciting journey towards a more meaningful organizational and professional life, to achieve with more soul and authenticity. Kori’s rigorous methodology, high ethical standards and collaborative orientation combine to support a uniquely effective consulting practice with clients and communities.

Kori launched her management consulting practice in 2002. Before that, she had an 11-year career in affordable housing and community development finance. Kori has since provided strategic assistance to more than 30 organizations and philanthropic institutions, such as:

  • Business planning to examine change in business model.

  • Group coaching of executives and managers for organizations seeking to diversify funding.

  • Homelessness strategic plan addressing NIMBYism for a joint powers mental health funding agency.

  • Succession planning for a transition of an organization founder.

Kori holds a B.A. in Geography from Macalester College, and an M.A. in Urban Planning from UCLA. Born and raised in Japan, she is fully bilingual in English and Japanese, and has a working proficiency in Spanish. She revels in water - she adores the Japanese onsen (hot springs) experience, and swims with a coach. With her daughter at college in Massachusetts, she lives with her son in Redlands (1.5 hours east of downtown Los Angeles), California, USA.