FIUTS 2024 Betty and Hiro Ogawa Winner!

Kiwa Tashiro today.

A FIUTS outing to the Fremont Troll where Kiwa is tickling the troll’s nostril, November, 2017.

Kiwa with the Finnish booth captain at FIUTS CulturalFest 2017.

FIUTS is thrilled to announce this year’s Betty and Hiro Ogawa Award Winner, Kiwa Tashiro. A native of Miyagi Japan and a first-year graduate student in the Executive Master of International Studies at University of Washington’s Jackson School, Kiwa is an ideal recipient of the 2024 award! 
    
When Kiwa was little her mother explained the meaning of her name: her parents paired the characters 希和 (ki-wa), ki meaning hope or desire and wa bearing the dual meaning of peace and the essence of Japan. As she grew older, she strived to embody those ideals in her work. Once a college student, she discovered the work of her university’s first president, Inazo Nitobe, and aimed to uphold his ambition: “to become a bridge across the Pacific.” Kiwa has grown into the values behind her name, as she seeks to foster peace and understanding by becoming a bridge in her own right between Japan and the world.
Kiwa has pursued this goal through study opportunities in China, Greece, the Philippines, and Russia, which allowed her and the other participants to engage in important cultural and political dialogue. As the FIUTS Community can appreciate, every cultural immersion widened her perspective on others as well as her own place in the world. Her engagement with people across cultures was most active through FIUTS, when Kiwa was an exchange student at the University of Washington for the 2016-2017 academic year. Above all, she found a “family” at FIUTS and later became a Student Facilitator to ensure her participation in a multitude of events and share in exploring the Pacific Northwest with students from around the world. 
Not unlike other former FIUTS students, Kiwa has returned to FIUTS where a diverse family for her remains!