A pioneer of the cannabinoid pharmaceutical and medical cannabis industry in Japan and Asia. Entrepreneur. Named one of Newsweek's "100 Japanese People Respected by the World," a TEDxOxbridge speaker, and featured in WEDGE's "Japan's Course Ahead, as Charted by 25 People."
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Kohei Yamada is the Founder and CEO of KISEKI GROUP CORP., which he established in March 2020 with the ambition of building Asia's first cannabinoid pharmaceutical platform company — integrating everything from cultivation through to drug development.
His international career began in Malawi, where he served as a Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer (JOCV) with JICA. There he produced an HIV/AIDS awareness song that reached number one on the national charts, making him a local celebrity. He later performed the song at the Fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD V), and donated a portion of the proceeds to fund an HIV testing facility in Malawi.
Back in Japan, he joined a trading house and went on to work across roughly 50 countries, with a particular focus on Asia and Africa. During Myanmar's period of military rule, he successfully established the import of rare metal resources into Japan, and as a pioneer in Myanmar's mineral resources sector he was selected — at the age of 32, the youngest member of the delegation — to join a ministerial mission led by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). He subsequently joined a Singapore-based family office, where he worked on mining and resource ventures. In 2016, he relocated with his family to Rwanda, before returning to Japan to launch KISEKI.