In 1992, Akio Naito arrived at Columbia Law School as a Fulbright Scholar. By then, he had already begun what would become a remarkable career at Seiko, joining the company’s legal department in 1984 after graduating from Sophia University in Tokyo. He went to New York to deepen his knowledge of law. He returned to Japan with something even more valuable: the ability to think, communicate, and lead across cultures.
That Fulbright experience would quietly shape the next three decades of his career.
Naito spent much of his early professional life working in corporate law, governance, and finance. He rose from Seiko’s legal department to become general counsel, a member of the company’s board, and eventually Chief Financial Officer of the publicly listed Seiko Group Corporation. Yet his career would ultimately take him far beyond the traditional boundaries of the legal profession. He served as Managing Director of Seiko Australia, managed operations and relationships across Europe and other international markets, and developed an increasingly global understanding of Seiko’s customers, employees, and partners.
That international experience became essential when Naito was given one of the most difficult assignments of his career.
Seiko, founded in Tokyo in 1881, had long been one of Japan’s most recognizable global companies. Its reputation for quality, innovation, and reliable timekeeping reached nearly every corner of the world. But Grand Seiko—the company’s pinnacle of precision, craftsmanship, and Japanese aesthetic expression which was launched in Japan in 1960—remained largely unknown outside Japan.
Although Grand Seiko entered the global market in 2010, early efforts to establish it as a luxury brand struggled to gain momentum. International consumers knew Seiko primarily as a maker of dependable and accessible watches. Many retailers and even some inside the company doubted whether customers would accept Grand Seiko alongside the established European luxury houses. As Naito later recalled, he was told bluntly that Grand Seiko would not sell in America.
In 2016, while serving as Seiko Group’s CFO, Naito was sent to the United States to change that trajectory.
He relocated from Tokyo to New Jersey and began rebuilding the business from the ground up. He recruited executives with experience in the international luxury-watch industry. He reassessed how Grand Seiko was distributed, marketed, and presented in the U.S. marekt. He worked to identify retailers who understood the brand’s potential and could explain its craftsmanship to customers. He also helped create intimate events where collectors could meet Grand Seiko’s watchmakers and see their extraordinary skills firsthand.
Under his leadership, the company clarified Grand Seiko’s identity as a distinctly Japanese expression of luxury. Its watches would combine extraordinary accuracy and technical innovation with artistry inspired by Japan’s mountains, forests, seasons, light, and changing landscapes. Its story would emphasize not only what a watch could measure, but also how human beings experience time.
“For a brand to be appreciated in the luxury segment,” Naito explained, “it has to have a clear identity or DNA.” Grand Seiko possessed that identity in its history, its watchmakers, and its relentless pursuit of precision. Naito’s task was to translate those qualities for the world without diminishing their authenticity.
The decisive moment came in 2017, when Grand Seiko was separated from Seiko and established as an independent brand, the decision made by the top management of the group, Shinji Hattori, the fourth generation of the founding family. The establishment of Grand Seiko Corporation of America, an entity separate from Seiko America, followed in 2018, with dedicated organizations later created in Europe and the Asia-Pacific. Naito positioned Grand Seiko as a global luxury house with its own identity, management, distribution, and community of collectors.
The transformation was extraordinary. During the seven years after Naito was assigned responsibility for Grand Seiko’s global expansion, its overseas sales volume grew tenfold. Grand Seiko opened prominent boutiques in international luxury centers, earned major recognition from the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, and expanded from what Naito once described as a “hidden gem” among watch enthusiasts toward recognition as a major global luxury brand. Harvard Business School eventually examined the transformation in a case aptly titled Grand Seiko—The Sleeping Lion.
In 2021, after nearly four decades with the company, Naito became President of Seiko Watch Corporation, assuming responsibility for Seiko, Grand Seiko, and Credor, another luxury brand from Seiko Watch Corporation. He continues to guide these brands through a rapidly changing global marketplace while preserving the distinct heritage and purpose of each.
His leadership offers an important lesson about international business. Global success does not require a company to surrender its national identity. At its best, global leadership allows a company to understand other cultures well enough to communicate its own more clearly. Naito did not make Grand Seiko less Japanese to make it more international. He helped the world understand why its Japanese character was precisely what made it exceptional.
Looking back on his journey, Naito credits Fulbright with giving him the adaptability to move beyond his original professional specialty and to build a team of professionals from different cultural backgrouns:
“I believe that my Fulbright experiences provided me an ability to adapt to the global business, beyond my specialty in the legal area.”
Those words capture the enduring promise of the Fulbright Program. Naito went to Columbia to study law. But Fulbright prepared him to become something more: a cross-cultural leader capable of navigating unfamiliar markets, challenging deeply held assumptions, building international teams, and translating Japanese excellence for a global audience.
He has also remained committed to the community that helped shape him. As President of the Fulbright Alumni Association of Japan, Naito has worked to strengthen the bonds among alumni and sustain the educational relationship between Japan and the United States. His service reminds us that the Fulbright experience does not end when a scholar returns home. It becomes a lifelong responsibility to widen the path for those who follow.
As the Fulbright Program celebrates its 80th anniversary, Akio Naito’s story embodies our theme: Our Legacy, Our Future. His legacy can be seen in the global rise of Grand Seiko, in the international teams he assembled, and in the renewed confidence with which Japanese craftsmanship now stands among the world’s finest. His future is reflected in every Fulbrighter who carries knowledge across borders and transforms it into leadership, innovation, and service.
A fine watch measures the passage of time. Akio’s Fulbright experience was the time of his life, and shaped the direction of his global leadership.
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