Stephen Sumner, M.S.
(Director: 2023 to Present)
Stephen Sumner is the NC Japan Center’s seventh director and began his new duties in October 2023. Born and raised in Surry County, Stephen is a North Carolina native who entered NC State University in 1991 and graduated as a Caldwell Fellow with a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering and a Japanese minor. As an undergraduate student at NC State, Stephen spent the summer of 1993 studying Japanese at Nagoya University on a scholarship awarded by the NC Japan Center and went on to spend the following two summers as a Manufacturing Engineering intern at Garrett Turbo in Saitama, Japan. After graduating NCSU, Stephen was hired as a simulation engineer by Intel Corp. in 1996 where he worked for 4 years, eventually leading to a 23 year career in the semiconductor industry. In 2000, Stephen joined Entegris Inc. where he spent 14 of his 19 years of service in Japan as Director of Product Management, working directly with various Japanese customers to solve technical and business challenges. Stephen also held other roles as Director of Engineering and Director of Marketing and Intellectual Property Management.
In 2019, Stephen left his career in semiconductor to pursue his passion for supporting students in their higher education goals. After finishing his Master of Science in Engineering at the University of Arkansas, Stephen began working as the First Year Advisor in Lee Business School at the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 2020 where he was responsible for enrolling all incoming first year students, greeting them in advising sessions during New Student Orientation each summer, and shepherding them into their second year feeling successful and confident.
As Director of the NC Japan Center, Stephen will use his corporate and academic experience toward the following priorities: 1) bolstering North Carolina’s academic pipeline for Japanese-speaking graduates to support Japanese enterprises all across North Carolina, 2) supporting economic development activities between Japan and North Carolina, and 3) growing the scale of community engagement activities such as non-credit Japanese language courses, cultural events, and collaborative events with other Japan-related community organizations. Stephen plans to re-envision the use of the Harry C. Kelly Memorial Fund for U.S.-Japan Scientific Cooperation to raise the level of student engagement with Japanese studies and raise the level of prestige of students who invest in majors and minors in Japanese studies. The Kelly Memorial Fund helps strengthen collaboration between the scientific and technical communities of Japan and the United States through scholarships and fellowships for exchange students in the sciences and engineering at NC State, as well as for study of the Japanese language, but the NC Japan Center can help encourage students in all academic fields who want to incorporate Japanese studies into their learning programs.