Chisato Fukuda Calvert
Strategic Partnership Director, SINAI Technologies
Chisato Fukuda Calvert, Ph.D. has 15 years of strategic partnership and 7+ years of business development experience across international development, nonprofits, and startups – all with a focus on advancing equitable solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges driven by climate change. She is currently Strategic Partnership Director of SINAI Technologies, where she is developing and executing the company’s strategic partnership strategy aimed to help companies build their decarbonization strategy and meet their net-zero targets.
She has served as Acting Director of OpenAQ Inc., where she managed all aspects of the company, including developing and implementing the strategic partnership strategy, partnership building, business development, and managing a growing open-source air quality platform that aggregates and harmonizes over 17 billion air quality measurements from 136 countries across the globe.
She was also Director of Strategic Partnerships at Impact Experience, where she served as an advisor and liaison between key financial partners and community leaders to channel investments into underserved communities throughout the U.S. to support climate resilience, disaster recovery, and community development. Chisato is also the Co-founder and former Director of SmartAir Mongolia, a social enterprise focused on developing and distributing affordable air purifiers to safeguard health against toxic air in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – one of the most polluted cities in the world.
She has also led environmental governance programs at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Laos, and across Southeast Asia, building strategic partnerships with national governments across ASEAN countries, research institutions, and diverse industries to champion win-win collaborations to advance environmental sustainability. Furthermore, she held positions at Trace Foundation in New York, and National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) in Washington, D.C. In addition to her work experience, she has conducted ethnographic research extensively across Asia including in Mongolia, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
Her doctoral dissertation fieldwork focused on health disparities caused by air pollution exposure in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. She has served as a consultant on several environmental health projects and climate mitigation interventions. Chisato earned her Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and graduated from Bucknell University with a Cultural Anthropology Honors Degree.