Program Director

 

Rikki Koda is the founder of Wing International -- a charitable fund started in 2013, to help alleviate poverty and to support educational initiatives in developing countries, via promotion of micro scale grass roots projects.  Rikki's career started as an electrical engineer, in Phoenix, Arizona, where he worked at the Semiconductor Division of Motorola and received three U.S. Patents for designing microchips that operate under non-conventional environments.  He then moved back to Tokyo (his place of birth) and traded financial securities and options for UBS, a Swiss-based investment bank.  Transferring to New York trading floor and resigning after 9/11, Rikki traveled around the world on a motorcycle for two years, visiting more than 100 countries, and relocated to Honolulu, Hawaii, where he joined a team of investment professionals managing a portfolio of $7 billion, on behalf of a private charitable educational trust endowed by the will of Hawaiian Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop -- the great-granddaughter and last direct descendant of King Kamehameha I.  Rikki is now living in Japan, managing Hawaiian real estate part time and aspiring to achieve his philanthropic goals by reaching out to local communities world-wide.  Rikki received a Master's degree from Harvard University and an undergraduate dual degree from the University of Pennsylvania.  In his spare time, Rikki likes to sing the Beatles with his neighborhood friends at a local karaoke pub.