Andrew M Saidel
President & CEO

Mr. Saidel (56) assists U.S., Japanese, European, and Israeli executives with business development, investment strategy, and alliance management in technology-intensive industries. Since co-founding DSA in 1996, he has collaborated with global innovators across a variety of sectors, including medical technology, biopharmaceuticals, financial services, robotics, mobility, agriculture, homeland security, defense, information technology, and energy.

He assisted Pfizer’s launch of its first organic spinout, RaQualia Pharma Inc. (4579: JASDAQ Growth), helping its founding team raise $111 million prior to an IPO. He served on its Board of Directors from July 2008 through March 2010. He currently is a member of the Board of Directors of AskAt Inc., a biopharmaceutical venture based in Nagoya, Japan.

Mr. Saidel first visited Japan as a student of poetry and literature in 1987. Following graduate school in political economics, he began his career as a policy aide to 21 members of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, based in Nagata-cho, Japan’s Capitol Hill, from 1990 to 1993.

He returned to the United States in 1993 and worked for the Institute for Defense Analyses, a federally-funded research and development center, as a consultant on U.S.-Japan dual use technology. He then became an analyst on East Asia for the U.S. Government and in 1996 travelled to Japan with Secretary of Defense William Perry in conjunction with the Tokyo Summit between President Clinton and Prime Minister Hashimoto.

Mr. Saidel has spoken widely at venues including the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the World Affairs Council, the U.S. National Intelligence Council, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Japanese Cabinet Office, the Japan Institute of Invention and Innovation, the University of Tokyo, and the AIPAC Annual Policy Conference.

He served for two years on the first International Collaboration Advisory Council at the University of Tokyo, for four years on the Administrative Advisory Council at RIKEN: The Institute for Physical and Chemical Research, Japan’s largest scientific institution, and for seven years as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens. He was Japan Advisor to the Albert Einstein Foundation and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Japan-America Society of Washington, D.C.

He speaks, reads, and writes Japanese and lived in Japan for five years. He earned a B.A. from Colgate University, a Certificate with Honors from Kansai University of Foreign Studies in Osaka, Japan, and an M.A. from Stanford University.