speaker-info

George Hara

Chairman of the Board
Alliance Forum Foundation
Group Chairman & CEO
DEFTA PARTNERS

Special Advisor to the Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister of Japan
Hon. Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Hong Kong Chinese University,
Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Osaka Metropolitan University.
Professor, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University
International Council Member, Salk Institute for Biological Studies

George Hara is an archaeologist and successful entrepreneur. While he was a graduate student at Stanford University in 1981, George founded a successful startup developing fiber optics display systems. He then established DEFTA Partners, under which he has funded and led many early-stage technology companies in the US, Europe and Israel to success, including the first gene therapy company Viagene, the first antisense therapy company Isis Pharmaceuticals, and the first bioinformatics company Arris Pharmaceuticals. He has recently launched DEFTA Healthcare Technologies to fund and grow technology companies that are enabling every person to lead a healthy life until their final moment.

George’s public service record includes serving on the board of directors of San Francisco University, Zoo, and Opera, where he helped revitalize these organizations. He is also a respected advisor to heads of state, governments, and international organizations. George serves as Special Advisor to the Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister of Japan, Global Agenda and Meta Council Member of the World Economic Forum, and Chairman of the Alliance Forum Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization in a Special Consultative Status with the UN ECOSOC that conducts many initiatives in the areas of anti-malnutrition, microfinance, new industry creation, and Public Interest Capitalism. In Yokohama, Japan, George established the Hara Model Railway Museum, which he dedicates to his late father Nobutaro whose lifelong hobby was to build and collect models of trains from around the world.

In the Japanese government, George has held roles of Senior Advisor to the Minister of Finance from 2006 to 2009, Deputy Chairman of the Expert Panel of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, the Prime Minister’s Special Commissioner on the Government Tax Panel, a Member of the Industrial Structure Council of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and a Member of the ICT council of the Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications. Under his vision of Public Interest Capitalism, and through these roles, George works to build a framework to commercialize and industrialize new technologies and to rebuild the country’s fiscal health while reducing the tax rates and increasing tax revenues at the same time.