Meet Yukiko Washio

We recently connected with Yukiko Washio and have shared our conversation below.

Yukiko, so glad you were able to set aside some time for us today. We’ve always admired not just your journey and success, but also the seemingly high levels of self-discipline that you seem to have mastered and so maybe we can start by chatting about how you developed it or where it comes from?

I have been a clinical researcher in the field of maternal infant health and substance and alcohol use for the past 15 years. I was born in USA and grew up half of my life in Japan. I came back to USA in 2000. I had no oral communication skills in English when I came to USA, and the professor at the time as my advisor in a graduate school warned me that he would send me back to Japan because we could hardly communicate in English beyond initial greeting. Japanese international students are normally at the superior level academically and linguistically by the time they come to USA; however, that was not the case with me at all. Since I did not want to go back to Japan when the 30-year recession was starting to get serious, impacting the wage and job opportunities, I finally realized that I had to work hard in order to survive in USA and used my training background of behavioral science to keep my focus on developing English skills. Since I also had to study for the graduate school that was extremely language heavy, I could hardly sleep for the first three years leading to health crisis and mental health breakdown. The doctor who I saw at the time warned me that I might die from overwork and lack of sleep if I kept going at my life the way I did. That was when I realized that not only did I have to work hard, I also had to take care of my physical and mental health at the same time. We have only 24 hours a day and I had to plan my day very carefully in order to accomplish personal, professional, and health goals to survive in USA.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am trained as a behavioral scientist and clinical researcher in maternal infant health and substance and alcohol use. I have been funded by the National Institute of Health to improve the health of perinatal people and their children using behavioral and pharmacological interventions, mostly focused on smoking, alcohol use, substance use, and breastfeeding and other relevant behaviors. I have worked at a university- associated research institute, the obstetric department of a statewide hospital, and also at a globally active research institute. I also teach undergraduate and graduate students as well as medical students and residents in behavioral science and maternal infant health clinical research.

However, having a unique background in half exposure to Japan and half exposure to USA, while providing my family as the main breadwinner, this profession itself did not fulfill my entirity for some reasons, and the level of motivation and energy to live was going down, getting into the cycle of anxiety and depression. During the pandemic, my ex-husband and I decided to send our children to Tokyo for going to school with a tight community network and excellent school education with restaurant-grade school lunch meals. They came back to USA after the pandemic but now have been back to Tokyo for cotninuing their primary and secondary education.

In the meantime, I finally paid off the house mortgage and started my solitary living in a suburban apartment, which actually fueled the cycle of anxiety and depression, suffering from finding the reason to live while feeling extremely pressured by having to provide for my family in Tokyo Japan with this rather unstable and high-pressuring academic profession. My friend in Manhattan recommended to take a look at the Craigslist for finding an apartment after my lease ends, and I magically found the current closet Manhattan apartment in the middle of Soho by just one search and one time in-person viewing.

My personal life obviously drastically changed since then; yet, I did not know how to enjoy life in general and was still very worried about my profession, my personal welfare, and my family in Japan. It took me about a year to start becoming creative about my life, and while my friend in Manhattan recommended me to think about performing arts based on my dancing background and unique personal and professional life, I finally came to realize that pursuing acting is the way to distill complicated and unique personal and professional experiences into a form of art. So now, I am continuing to be active in clinical research and academic teaching, I started pursuing my second career as an actor.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

One most helpful knowledge and skill I had was that I was trained as a behavioral scientist with knowledge and skills to change one’s behavior. It is interesting to see how other behavioral scientists often do not seem to make use of their own professional knowledge and skills for improving their own lives and others around them but just take their professional training only for their professional activities. I had no choice but make the best use of my training to first of all improve my oral communication in English, organize and accomplish daily tasks, then keep looking back to see where I am at in my personal and professional life, and decide further course of actions. Some without this kind of training can do this naturally; but my case was purely owing to my training background.
The second quality that I carried as someone who is a native Japanese woman and grew up in Tokyo Japan for the first half of their life was that I was very serious and loyal to myself as well as to others. It is not always so good to be too hard on yourself and I had to learn to moderate that part in myself over the years, but was definitely helpful at least for the initial years in USA, initial years when I started my professional research career, and initial years when I had to juggle between family business of my own and professional development as the main breadwinner. I also learned to be very loyal to others who took me seriously in my journey after I came to USA because I realized that not many people took me seriously or sincere to me as someone who was speaking and behaving unlike those who spent most of their lives in USA.
 The third perspective that I like to share based on my journey in USA is that it is important to separate objectively measurable successes from personal happiness. This is not just about me but I have observed in others over the years both in personal and professonal lives in that when you pursue successes that everyone admires and are objectively measurable such as financial gain, status achievement, and award winning you have to be careful not to lose sight of what makes yourself happy by pursuing the activities you engage. For example in my personal case, I became a NIH funded researcher who was recognized as an independent investigator by the NIH standard; then, I actually became heavily depressed by the actual reality of academia and amount of pressure I had to deal with. The same happened to me when I owned a house in a suburb and was able to carry two beautiful healthy boys as expected for many Japanese females when they reach their certain age.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

Yes I am looking for people to partner and collaborate with in all aspects including my research, international activities, and acting.
Ever since I moved to Manhattan, I have started my second career of acting while continuing my research activities.
I would love to find partners to collaborate on acting and filming.
I would eventually like to connect acting to my clinical research as well.

I am also communicating with my friends in Manhattan on trading wine/sake/other goods between Japan and US. I would not be the major player in this matter; however, I would appreciate interests from others to move this agenda forward as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rti.org/expert/yukiko-washio
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yukiko-washio-184b46201/
• Other: https://www.rti.org/insights/maternal-health-substance-use-q-and-a

Image Credits

Reiko Yonezawa