In March 2017 SEKISUI celebrated its 70th anniversary along with an event at the headquarter in Japan. Alireza Sedarati had the chance to join the festivities. In his journey report he tells us about his trip and gives a short summary of the event.
My name is Alireza Sedarati, Sales and Business Development Manager at SEKISUI Chemical GmbH. I was born in Iran in August 1980 and live in Germany since 2011.
I was invited to the 70th anniversary almost two weeks before the event, which was a big surprise to me. By joining SEKISUI at the end of 2014, a new chapter in my life has begun. New experiences, new working environment and new challenges have brought me joy and satisfaction. Being invited to SEKISUI’s 70th anniversary was a great honour to me.
I was given a schedule for the whole trip almost a week earlier, a quite short stay! It reminded me of my last two nights stay in Japan when I suffered from a horrible jet lag, especially during noon time. But, the excitement of attending this great event kept me on my feet.
After arriving at Narita airport I headed to SEKISUI’s headquarter, where I had the opportunity to meet my colleagues from Specialty Chemical Division from all over the world. It was nice to finally meet some of my colleagues I had previously only met by email, such as LinkedIn. Having the opportunities to meet our senior management and listening to their stories and opinions was quite exciting. I hope that I managed to build new relationships and friends throughout the company what would definitely help me for my future activity.
On Friday, 3rd of March I joined the Mid-Term Management Plan Presentation in the morning and visited the SEKISUI’s 70th anniversary ceremony in the afternoon. The review of the new mid-term plan by President Koge was very fascinating, especially the discussion about SHIFT and FUSION within the next three years. In addition to SEKISUI’s new vision to achieve a different phase of growth until 2020, increasing the number of female managers within our organisation is a brilliant idea.
By far one of the highlights for me was to sing the SEKISUI’s Corporate song in Japanese! For the first time in my life I was holding Japanese lyrics, trying to read them and sing cheerfully along. Nobuyuki Tsujii’s piano concert was another amazing part of the event. He showed me that you can reach everything you want even with physical disabilities. He reminded me of a beautiful sentence that is a motto of my life “The only thing standing between you and your goal are the absurd stories you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it”
All these interesting events ended up having a wonderful dinner with all esteemed Specialty Chemical Division guests. I had the honour to sit next to Konno san, our Specialty Chemical General Manager and we exchanged some ideas about future activities. That would definitely help me to do my future work efficiently. Last but not least, I’d like to thank Tsukuda san, our Managing Director of SEKISUI Chemical GmbH, for all his support and guidance. I do hope to join SEKISUI’s next anniversary in five years again. Who knows!
