Author: Author Karen Hill Anton

The Grand Prize winner of The Memoir Prize for Books, Karen Hill Anton is a writer, columnist, consultant, and coach.

For more than fifteen years, Karen Hill Anton wrote the popular column “Crossing Cultures” for The Japan Times. Her column “Another Look” for Chunichi Shimbun, invited it's Japanese readers to translate it, which they did avidly. Additionally, she wrote a bi-monthly opinion essay for “Shukan ST” a publication expressly for Japanese students of English.

Beginning in 2000, Karen consulted for global corporations in Japan, managing employee development programs. Her clients include these major corporations: Citibank, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Baxter, Shinsei Bank, JP Morgan, McKinsey, BNP Paribas. 

She has coached senior executives in the finance, pharmaceuticals and software industries. Her areas of expertise are:  Cross-cultural competence, Assertive Communication, Work-Life Balance, Networking and Social Skills, Maternity leave and Lifestyle coaching.

Karen was invited to serve on the Internationalization and Society Advisory Council of Prime Ministers Keizō Obuchi and Ryutaro Hashimoto. She is Emerita: Board of Governors, Temple University Japan, Shizuoka Human Rights Association, the Jun Ashida Educational Foundation Committee, and an Allman Fellow and Freeman Foundation Fellow.

Karen studied Japanese calligraphy for 25 years and attained second-degree mastery. Calligraphy is her passion (not a hobby). Her hobby (also a passion!) is knitting – with four children and nine grandchildren, she knows she will always have a knitting project. A devoted student of Hula, Karen is happy she’s found a great class and wonderful teacher near her home in Tenryu.

Her eldest daughter was born in Denmark, and her other three children in Japan. Originally from New York City, she’s lived with her husband William Anton, in Tenryu, Shizuoka prefecture since 1975.