Mai Oka '01 Manager, Attorney (CA) at Daiichi Sankyo., Ltd.

Mai Oka ’01 is a manager and attorney (CA) at Daiichi Sankyo Company, Ltd., a multinational pharmaceutical company and the second largest pharmaceutical company in Japan.

A Japanese American, Oka visited her grandparents in Tokyo every summer.

When selecting colleges, she found Oxy particularly outstanding because it offered the study abroad program at Waseda University, one of the top prestigious universities in Japan.

While studying abroad in her junior year, she met her future husband there, who was studying abroad from Sweden. After graduating, she attended law school at Southwestern Law School and passed the California Bar Exam on her first try. Oka then moved to Japan and worked for a boutique law firm in Tokyo for two years. There, she handled a wide range of cases from trademark infringement for luxury brands to dissolutions of international marriages. Oka also provided free legal advice to American soldiers at the U.S. military base in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture.

Oka then moved to a securities firm and worked in finance doing global compliance for nearly ten years. During the pandemic in 2020, Oka decided to completely change industries as she wanted to feel like she was making a difference in the world, leading her to her current job. Oka says that she delights in knowing that her work is contributing to society and making the world a better place where medicine can be delivered to those in need.