Kumiko Shikimachi CPP APMP is one of those people who gets things done. Her story starts with a journey that covers more miles than most with a terrific ending.
Kumiko first found APMP searching the internet and then we got to meet her at APMP’s Bid & Proposal Con 2012 in Dallas, TX. She self-funded her trip and registration fee from Tokyo to Dallas because she wanted to meet the people she was reading about.
By attending Bid & Proposal Con in Dallas, she wanted to meet, talk and learn from them proposal professionals she had read about. Betsy Blakney, who was then the CEO/Chair of APMP helped show Kumiko how APMP worked and introduced her to others. From that point on she was hooked – she knew that she loved the bid and proposal industry and had to come back.
Every year, Kumiko would come back to APMP’s Bid & Proposal Con. This time she had a plan. She wanted to bring APMP’s best practices to the Japanese business community. What made this tough is that there was no bid and proposal community, let alone an industry before Kumiko brought it there.
Four years after attending the Dallas APMP Bid & Proposal Con, Kumiko launched a chapter called APMP Japan. Today it has 70 members and APMP’s Body of Knowledge and Foundation Level Exam have been translated into Japanese. Business, bid and proposal professionals routinely get together in Tokyo to participate in Propothons, which are monthly work groups to study proposals using APMP’s best practices.
That’s one of many reasons Kumiko Shikimachi won the APMP’s 2016 Chapter Chair of the Year Award (the one she’s holding) at this year’s APMP Bid & Proposal Con. It would be difficult to find someone who has done so much with so little.
The people of APMP thank Kumiko for her hard work to bring APMP best practices to a new country where they did not exist before. We want to thank her for her care and passion to this great industry.
Rick Harris, CF APMP, is the Executive Director of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals. During his tenure, the association has nearly tripled in size and now serves bid and proposal professionals around the world. He can be reached at rick.harris@apmp.org.
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