At a time when ESG and CSR are locked up with complexity, credibility and challenge, business leaders are now asking whether there’s a different and inherently easier yet more powerful way of running and growing their businesses. Masami Sato has a profound and important answer. Something far more human, and far more powerful than any complex framework or reporting standard has yet delivered.
“What if we could make something great happen in our world just by doing what we do every day?”
Born in Japan and shaped by years of travelling the globe with little more than a backpack, Masami saw the world as it really is. She was driven to make business a real force for good.
Masami launched her first venture in 2001 and then in 2007 she framed this question: what if every business could make a real difference, every single day? The answer led to her founding B1G1: a movement that connects businesses to high-impact projects through every transaction, every interaction, every day.
What sets Masami apart is the why and the how behind what she has built. She doesn't believe businesses change the world by trying harder. She believes they change it by feeling differently - about their customers, their teams, and what it means to show up with purpose.
"You don't need to wait until you're big enough. Every interaction, every day, that's where impact actually lives."
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Masami's work challenges three assumptions most business leaders have never thought to question.
The first: that complex frameworks are the most effective path to real impact. They are not.
The second: that lasting change comes from grand annual strategies. . Culture is built through the smallest daily actions. The businesses that understand this are the ones that last.
The third: that generosity is something a business earns the right to do only once it succeeds.
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Masami speaks from twenty years of building a living, breathing alternative to the way business is typically done.
She brings a Japanese sensibility to Western business culture, the concept of Ikigai as a leadership tool, Wabi Sabi as a frame for finding beauty in imperfection, and the extraordinary compounding power of small, consistent actions.
She is founder-to-founder in her delivery. She has wrestled with the same questions her audiences carry.
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Masami is a two-time TEDx speaker and Amazon international bestselling author of four books: JOY, Giving Business, LEGACY: Sustainable Development Goals in Action, and Better Business, Better Life, Better World.
She is the recipient of the INSEAD Business as a Force for Good Award and Fast Company's World Changing Idea recognition. B1G1 became the 7th B Corp in Singapore in 2017.
She has spoken at the World Chambers Congress, the Osaka World Expo, the Genius Future Summit, the International Chamber of Commerce, Entrepreneurs' Organisation chapters worldwide, and for organisations including Cartier and Arup — earning audience ratings above 9.4 out of 10.
Her work is endorsed by Paul Polman, Former CEO of Unilever; Kate Williams, CEO of 1% for the Planet; and John Denton, Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce.